Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

BIRMINGHAM CORPORATION (GENERAL POWERS) [MONEY].

Order for Committee read.

HON. MEMBERS: Object!

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Morgan Jones): I would appeal to hon. Members not to object. This is not a controversial matter. This Government is interested and the late Government were also interested. I hope we shall be able to deal with the question now.

HON. MEMBERS: Agreed!

Captain BOURNE: Before we agree we are entitled to some explanation why a Committee of the Whole House is required.

Mr. SPEAKER: The explanation can be given in Committee. Considered in Committee.

[Mr. ROBERT YOUNG in the Chair.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That for the purpose of any Act of the present Session providing among other things for the exception from the provisions of the Poor Law Officers' Superannuation Act, 1896, of service on or after the 1st day of April, 1926, as a school teacher in the service of the Birmingham Board of Guardians, at Monyhull Colony, Moseley, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of such sums as may be necessary to defray the expenses of the Board of Education in respect of such superannuation allowances, gratuities and balances of contributions, as may become payable under the Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1925, by reason of the exception aforesaid."—[Mr. Dunnico.]

Mr. JONES: The point at issue is simple. It Concerns the Monyhull Colony for feeble-minded and epileptic children in the Moseley Division of Birmingham. The school is of a dual character: it has a Poor Law Section and a special school section, and as
such the teachers employed in the Institution come under the Poor Law Officers' Superannuation Scheme, or under the teachers' superannuation scheme of 1925. It has been discovered that the teachers there, 17 in number, elected to come under the teachers' superannuation scheme, but, unfortunately, some of them were allowed to contract out, with the approval of the Minister of Health and the President of the Board of Education. A judgment of the House of Lords has pronounced that it was not permissible to contract out; therefore from the year 1926, when the Teachers' Superannuation Act came into operation, until the 1st April, 1930, these teachers will be prejudiced in respect of their superannuation unless special provision is made for them. The only way to make such provision was by introducing a special Clause in some local legislation, and the occasion has arisen in connection with the Birmingham Corporation (General Powers) Bill. Clause 73 proposes to remove the prejudice to the teachers.

Mr. MACLEAN: If such a Money Resolution has become necessary, why was it not printed upon the Order Paper, so that hon. Members might read it and understand its purpose?

Mr. JONES: I understand that the White Paper has been in the Vote Office since yesterday.

Mr. MACLEAN: That is not my point. Any Resolution submitted to the House by any Minister ought to be upon the Order Paper. For a long time it has been the custom for any Resolution on Private Business, coming before Questions, to be printed, so that hon. Members might understand thoroughly what was coming before them, instead of having the Motion read verbally from the Chair. If the White Paper could be in the Vote Office for a day or two, surely the Resolution might have been printed, and put upon the Order Paper.

The CHAIRMAN: I understand that that is not the case in a Resolution moved under this procedure. The Resolution has to be printed if introduced under Standing Order 71A. Under the procedure adopted to-day the Resolution need not appear upon the Order Paper.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHINA (WUHU RISING).

Mr. DAY: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has received a Report of the recent rising at Wuhu, on the Yangtse River; whether, and to what extent, the British nationals were offered protection by the British gunboats in that locality; and can he give particulars?

The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Arthur Henderson): I have received no full report of the recent outbreak at Wuhu, and can add little to the information given in reply to my hon. Friend's question of 4th November. His Majesty's ship "Cricket" was stationed at Wuhu at the time; it was open to all British nationals to take refuge on board her while the danger lasted and a number did so. Two other British warships were also sent to Wuhu for the protection of British lives and property.

Mr. DAY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the British Consul at Nanking has received any reply to the request he made to the Provisional Government for the protection of British lives and property?

Mr. HENDERSON: That question must be put upon the Order Paper.

Oral Answers to Questions — PASSPORTS.

Mr. MATTERS: 2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it is the intention of the Government to abolish the present system of passports or at an early date materially to modify that system in the interests of the travelling public?

Mr. A. HENDERSON: Passports are provided by His Majesty's Government to enable a British subject who wishes to travel abroad to satisfy the authorities of foreign countries as to his identity. So long as it is necessary to control immigration into this country, they also enable the British Immigration authorities to distinguish British subjects returning to the United Kingdom. Every effort has been made to simplify the necessary
procedure. If, however, my hon. Friend will communicate to me any particular suggestion which he has in mind, I shall be pleased to consider it.

Mr. HARRIS: Seeing that we were able to do without passports before the War, would it not be a good celebration of the new peace atmosphere to return to pre-War practice?

Mr. HENDERSON: Not so long as we have 1,200,000 people out of employment.

Mr. HARRIS: Is it not possible to stop foreigners coming into this country without having passports for our own subjects?

Oral Answers to Questions — ANGLO-EGYPTIAN RELATIONS.

Captain CROOKSHANK: 46.
asked the Prime Minister whether he has received the views of the Australian and New Zealand Governments regarding the draft Egyptian Treaty; and, if so, whether he will make a statement on the subject?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. Ponsonby): I have been asked to reply to this question. His Majesty's present Government share the view of their predecessors that the frank and confidential exchange of information and views between the several Governments of His Majesty on current international questions, which is an essential feature in connection with the conduct of foreign policy, cannot but be seriously hampered if the correspondence on each occasion has to be conducted on the basis that it may have to be published. This consideration appears to the Government here to hold good in the present instance, in which consultations have taken place and accordingly they do not feel it possible to make any statement of the nature referred to by the hon. and gallant Member.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Is it not important on these matters to know the views of the Dominions, and since when has the hon. Gentleman become converted to the principle of secret diplomacy?

Mr. PONSONBY: The Prime Minister replied to a similar question to the one put down by the hon. Member yesterday in practically the same terms and I think the House; generally
agreed that the publication of correspondence and consultations between the Dominions and ourselves is undesirable.

Captain EDEN: If that is the view of the Government, why was it not adhered to in the equally confidential correspondence between Lord Lloyd and the Government?

Mr. PONSONBY: Egypt is not a Dominion.

Captain EDEN: Is not the correspondence of Lord Lloyd, as a direct representative of the Government, more confidential than that of the Dominions?

Mr. MACKINDER: Is it not a fact that the Opposition ask for Papers?

Commander BELLAIRS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Singapore correspondence was published?

Mr. SKELTON: Is the Minister aware that the Opposition did not ask for Papers?

Oral Answers to Questions — ANGLO-RUSSIAN RELATIONS.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALL: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the assurances given on behalf of the Russian Soviet Government as to abstention from anti-British propaganda, as a condition of the renewal of diplomatic relations, extend to the activities of the Third International and other, Communist organisations which are operated from Russia?

Mr. A. HENDERSON: I have nothing to add to the full statement on this subject which I made in the course of yesterday's debate.

Sir F. HALL: The right hon. Gentleman will understand that when I put down the question I did not know that he would deal with the matter yesterday.

Commander OLIVER LOCKER-LAMPSON: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether or not secret diplomatic hags will be permitted to the Soviet diplomats?

Mr. HENDERSON: All these questions will be matters of negotiation and will
be reported completely to this House when the Treaty comes up for ratification.

Commander LOCKER-LAMPSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that they do not have more diplomatic bags than anybody else?

Commander BELLAIRS: Is it not the case that the relations between the Soviet Government and the Communist International are clearly established, and is it not the clear duty of the Government to get an assurance that that institution will be suppressed?

Mr. HENDERSON: I think that is covered by the answer I gave to an hon. Member.

Captain CROOKSHANK: 47.
asked the Prime Minister if he has now received the views of the Governments of the Dominions regarding the resumption of diplomatic relations with Russia; and, if so, will he lay papers on the subject?

Mr. PONSONBY: I have been asked to reply. As regards the first part of the hon. and gallant Member's question, I would refer him to the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs yesterday. As regards the second part of the question the reply to his immediately preceding question as to interchange of views between His Majesty's Governments applies with equal force to the hon. and gallant Member's request for papers on the present subject.

Captain CROOKSHANK: I heard that statement yesterday, and may I ask whether the Government are negotiating merely on their own behalf, or on behalf of everyone of the Dominion Governments, or whether the Dominion Governments will negotiate for themselves with regard to trade and other matters?

Mr. PONSONBY: As I have already explained, there has been consultation between His Majesty's Government and His Majesty's Governments in the Dominions.

Sir F. HALL: Will the Cabinet undertake to publish the correspondence which has taken place with the Dominions?

Mr. SPEAKER: The Minister has already given a reply to that question.

Sir F. HALL: We never had a reply, Mr. Speaker. [Interruption.]

Mr. SPEAKER: We cannot linger on one subject all the afternoon.

Oral Answers to Questions — EASTER (STABILISATION).

Captain BOURNE: 9.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any representations have been made by His Majesty's Government to the Vatican on the desirability of stabilising Easter; and, if so, can be make any statement on the matter?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Short): Steps have been taken to ascertain the views of the Vatican and His Majesty's Government is also communicating with the Governments of other European countries on the question. My right hon. Friend is not at present in a position to make a statement or to go into details.

Captain BOURNE: Will the hon. Member communicate with me when it is convenient for his right hon. Friend to make a statement?

Mr. SHORT: Certainly.

Captain GUNSTON: Is it not the case that, if this Act had been in operation, Easter would have fallen on a date which has always been wet in the past?

Oral Answers to Questions — PALESTINE.

BRITISH FORCES.

Captain PETER MACDONALD: 10.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what naval forces were despatched to Palestine at the request of the High Commissioner; what naval forces are still there; what expense was incurred in meeting the High (Commissioner's request; and by whom the expenditure will be met?

The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. A. V. Alexander): On the outbreak of trouble in Palestine, one battleship, one aircraft carrier, one cruiser and two destroyers were ordered there. They remained from two to three weeks, and subsequently one day visits have been paid by one battleship, one aircraft carrier, two cruisers and two destroyers.
A battleship arrived at Jaffa on the 2nd November, and according to the latest information available is still there. Particulars of expenses incurred are not yet available, and no decision has yet been reached as to the allocation of the expenditure.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether all this expense and trouble were not caused by the late Government?

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: 63.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies what naval and military forces have been sent to Palestine; and how long is it proposed to keep them there?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Lunn): Information as to military forces was given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War on the 31st October in reply to a question by the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Wight (Captain P. Macdonald). As regards naval forces, I understand that my right hon. Friend, the First Lord of the Admiralty, is replying to-day to a question on the subject by the same hon. and gallant Member. I am unable to say for how long the forces which still remain will be kept in Palestine. That must depend upon the requirements of the situation.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: Will it not be necessary to keep those forces in Palestine as long as the policy of the Balfour Declaration is continued in Palestine?

ARRESTS.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 27.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies how many Jewish and Arab citizens, respectively, of Palestine are under arrest, or awaiting trial, or in prison in connection with the recent disturbances?

Mr. LUNN: The particulars at present available do not enable me to give a full reply to this question. I have accordingly asked the High Commissioner to furnish the desired information.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Will the hon. Gentleman let me know when he has this information?

Mr. LUNN: I will.

POLICE.

Captain E. N. BENNETT: 32.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies the expenditure involved in the recruiting and transport of additional British police to Palestine?

Captain CROOKSHANK: 61.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the cost of the recently recruited gendarmerie for Palestine is to be paid for out of Imperial funds or entirely by the Palestinian Government?

Mr. LUNN: The expenditure incurred on the recruitment and transport to Palestine of additional British police who were recently engaged in this country was approximately £3,900. This expenditure is borne by the Palestine Government.

Mr. DAY: Can the hon. Gentleman give the numbers of British police who were transported?

Mr. LUNN: No.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 38.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies the number of Jews and Arabs respectively in the Palestine police and the Palestine defence forces at the latest date available prior to the rising?

Mr. LUNN: The latest available figures for the Palestine police are: Jews, 211; Arabs (including all non-British Christians), 1,120. For the Trans-Jordan frontier force: Jews, 27; Arabs, 441. The latter force, while available for service in both Palestine and Trans-Jordan, operates mainly in Trans-Jordan, to which the Balfour Declaration does not apply.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Can my hon. Friend say whether the police who failed in their duty on 23rd August have been restored to the force, and, if so, has there been any disciplinary action taken?

Mr. LUNN: I should like to have notice of that question.

Captain CAZALET: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the expenses of the whole of that force are found by Palestine or by Trans-Jordan?

Mr. LUNN: I could not give an answer to that question.

RIOTS (CASUALTIES AND SENTENCES).

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: 60.
asked the Undersecretary of State for the Colonies whether he can give the total numbers of casualties in the riots in Palestine; how many Jews and Arabs have been brought to trial; and how many, respectively, have been condemned to death?

Mr. LUNN: As the answer is long and contains a number of figures, I will, with the hon. 'and gallant Member's permission, publish it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: Will the hon. Gentleman look into the sentences, seeing that the Arabs are often given 12 times more for a similar offence than the Jews get?

Following is the answer:

The total casualties reported up to 31st August were:


Killed or died or wounds:



Moslems
83


Christians
4


Jews
109


Wounded in hospital:



Moslems
122


Christians
10


Jews
183

Many persons also received treatment as out-patients, but there is no full record of the number. I have no figures in respect of-the period subsequent to the 31st August, but I believe that there have been very few casualties since that date.

The figures asked for in the second part of the question are as follow:



Arabs.
Jews.


Cases dealt with summarily
668
66


Sentenced by District Courts
98
10


Sentenced by Courts of Criminal Assize
26
Nil


Total
792
76

The above figures cover the period up to 27th October. They do not include persons committed for trial by the District Courts or the Courts of Criminal Assize.

As regards the third part of the question, up to 20th October death sentences had been pronounced on five persons, all of whom are Arabs. These sentences are now under appeal, as provided by Palestinian law.

SPECIAL CONSTABLES PARADE (DISMISSALS).

Mr. de ROTHSCHILD: 66.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received a protest submitted to the Palestine Administration on 5th September, for transmission to His Majesty's Government, by a number of British subjects against the infringement of their constitutional rights resulting from their dismissal from a public parade of duly enrolled special constables held in Jerusalem on 27th August last on the sole ground that they were Jews; and what action he has taken in the matter?

Mr. LUNN: The protest to which the hon. Member refers was duly received, but it was not thought necessary to take any special action upon it, as the matter had already been fully gone into by the Palestine Government and the Secretary of State.

Major Sir ARCHIBALD SINCLAIR: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether these facts are true?

Mr. LUNN: I could not answer that question.

Sir A. SINCLAIR: Is it true that these duly enrolled constables were dismissed?

HON. MEMBERS: Answer!

Mr. SPEAKER: The Minister has already answered that he does not know.

Commander O. LOCKER-LAMPSON: On a point of Order.

HON. MEMBERS: Sit down.

Mr. SPEAKER: I hope hon. Members will allow the hon. and gallant Member to submit a point of Order.

Commander LOCKER-LAMPSON: We were unable to hear the answer. The hon. Member has only to read out his answer again, and I think he will satisfy my hon. and gallant Friend.

Mr. SPEAKER: The answer was that the hon. Member did not know.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY.

SINGAPORE BASE (MALAY STATES).

Mr. ALBERY: 11.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether in view of the large financial contribution made, the Independent Malay States will be given an opportunity of expressing their views
before any final decision is taken regarding the Singapore naval base?

Mr. ALEXANDER: In arriving at a decision due regard will be paid to all relevant considerations.

Mr. ALBERY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he cannot give a more definite answer to a simple question?

Mr. ALEXANDER: In my opinion, it is quite a definite answer.

Sir GEORGE PENNY: Does it also include New Zealand and other British possessions who make contributions?

Mr. ALEXANDER: All relevant considerations as regards all the Dominions and British Possessions which are affected.

Mr. ALBERY: Does it not arise from that that the Independent Malay States will be consulted?

Commander O. LOCKER-LAMPSON: May we have an answer of some sort?

TROPICAL STATIONS (DIET).

Mr. OSWALD LEWIS: 12.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether his attention has been called to the paragraph in the statistical report of the health of the Navy for 1927, in which the medical officer of His Majesty's Ship "Lupin," commenting upon the fact that only teetotalers succumbed to an outbreak of beri-beri in the Persian Gulf, infers that the drinking of beer enabled the others to resist this disease; and whether he will take steps to see that ample facilities are provided for all ranks to obtain this remedy when on tropical stations in future?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The number of cases in the outbreak referred to was so small that it is not legitimate to draw any far-reaching conclusions from them. Every endeavour is made to provide naval personnel serving on tropical stations with a diet containing a sufficiency of those food factors which protect against beri-beri and similar diseases.

Dr. VERNON DAVIES: In view of the fact that on this particular ship they were not able to procure this particular food and found the local beer an excellent substitute, will the right hon. Gentleman see that arrangements are made for the provision of this substitute?

BUILDING PROGRAMME (SLOOPS).

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: 13.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty when, and where, the two sloops of the 1929 naval programme are to be laid down?

Mr. ALEXANDER: One vessel will be built at Devonport and the other at Chatham. I regret that I cannot yet give the actual date of laying down, but the work preparatory to laying down is in hand.

DOCKYARDS (EMPLOYMENT AND RETIREMENT).

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: 14.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether piece and job work is to be discontinued in the Royal dockyards; and whether short time is to be introduced to avoid discharges in the Royal dockyards?

The CIVIL LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. George Hall): It is not at present proposed to make the changes mentioned in the hon. Member's question. The position as regards work in the Royal Dockyards is satisfactory under existing conditions, and is expected to remain so for the winter.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Do I understand that the Admiralty is entirely satisfied to have over 2,000 unemployed men in the Devonport Employment Exchange?

Mr. HALL: The Admiralty is satisfied that we have no more unemployed at the present time than when the last Government was in office.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that we have more unemployed in Devonport since the present Government took office?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: 15.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in order to mitigate unemployment in dockyard towns and as an inducement to those established men who so desire to take advantage of the opportunity to retire on pension before they reach pensionable age, he will consider granting some concession whereby established men could be credited with additional years, as used to be the practice under the Superannuation Act previous to 1907 on abolition of office?

Mr. ALEXANDER: During recent months the Admiralty has allowed established men, in trades in which there has
been a surplus in the dockyards, to take their discharge with pension and lump sum according to service under the Superannuation Acts. No additional inducement can be offered.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that that is not an answer to my question as to whether he can make this concession?

Mr. ALEXANDER: I think the last phrase of my answer covers that point; that no extra inducement can be offered.

Mr. MOSES: 22.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that a number of smiths and painters are under notice of discharge at Devonport from the works department of His Majesty's dockyard; and will he give reasons why such notices are necessary or order their cancellation?

Mr. G. HALL: Three smiths have been given notice of discharge because their services are not required; a number of redundant painters have been transferred to another department and their discharge has thus been avoided. I would remind my hon. Friend that the numbers of workmen employed must fluctuate to some extent to meet varying requirements.

CIVILIAN EMPLOYÉS, SIMONSTOWN AND BERMUDA.

Mr. KELLY: 17.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty the number of civilian employés in the service of the Admiralty at Simonstown and Bermuda in September of this year?

Mr. G. HALL: The numbers are 602 at Simonstown and 828 at Bermuda.

PROMOTIONS.

Mr. THOMAS LEWIS: 18.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty the total number of promotions from all ranks and ratings to the rank of mate and/or mate-engineer since the establishment of those ranks in 1913; the number of mates and mate-engineers so promoted who were retired under the various schemes of retrenchment; the number of such officers who, whilst still on the active list, have secured a higher rank than lieutenant-commander; and the number of such officers of higher rank than lieutenant-commander promoted from upper-deck officers and engineer officers?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The total numbers promoted to mate and mate (E) since the ranks were established are 415 and 207 respectively; of these 231 and 12 respectively have been retired under special retirement schemes. The numbers of such officers, still on the active list, who have been promoted to the rank or relative rank of commander or above, are three and 12; the numbers of other executive and engineer officers of these ranks now on the active list are 732 and 252 respectively.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he agrees that his answer shows that the mate scheme is not a reality and that the facilities for promotion from the lower deck are not adequate; and will he look into the matter?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The whole question of promotions from the lower deck is receiving the close attention of the Admiralty, but the hon. Member must not be misled by the figures which have been given. He ought to know that promotions to the rank of commander and above only come from a particular zone and it takes a number of years for any commissioned officer to reach that zone. It is therefore too early to judge what will be the proportion of ex-mates promoted to these ranks.

Mr. LEWIS: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of having the ranks referred to in the question represented on the Employment Board?

Mr. ALEXANDER: I must have notice of that question.

PENSIONS (WEEKLY PAYMENT AND TUBERCULOSIS).

Sir ROBERT GOWER: 19.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, having regard to the circumstance that Army and Air Force pensioners are permitted to draw their pensions weekly, he will consider the desirability of extending the same privilege to naval pensioners?

Mr. G. HALL: The reply is in the negative. The Admiralty have no evidence that any change would be welcomed by the main body of pensioners who are content with the present system, which it should be understood allows quarterly payments in advance. In any
particular case, however, where adequate reasons are forthcoming, special arrangements would be made for payment to be made monthly.

Dr. DAVIES: 21.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty how many of the 159 men invalided from the Service in 1927 for pulmonary tuberculosis were granted disability pensions; in how many cases was the disease held to be attributable to the conditions of service; and how do these numbers compare with those of the previous three years, expressed as a percentage of the number pensioned to the total number of cases?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The number of men invalided in 1927 for tuberculosis was 180 and pensions on the attributable scale were granted in 18 cases, or 10 per cent. of the total. This compares with 3 per cent. in 1926, 1 per cent. in 1925, and 3 per cent. in 1924. In a considerable number of cases pensions on the non-attributable scale were granted where the men had sufficient service to qualify.

Dr. DAVIES: Will the right hon. Gentleman observe that the percentage of pensions granted has increased rapidly this year, possibly due to the too great restrictions in previous years, and would he be prepared to look over some of the back cases to see if the present conditions on which pensions are granted are applicable to cases which have been previously refused?

Mr. ALEXANDER: I shall be glad to consider any representations of a specific character made to me. It is obviously difficult to go back on decisions which have been made under regulations which existed at that time, but I will consider it.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: While the figures show an improvement under the revised rules, is not the necessity for an appeal tribunal still apparent?

Mr. ALEXANDER: As far as I have been able to look into the matter, there is a considerable improvement in the method in which these cases are dealt with, but I have had no strong case put to me yet for an appeal tribunal, and, in fact, I am not at all sure that in the regular service cases an appeal tribunal would always be to the advantage of the men. I hope the hon. Member will consider that.

RHEUMATIC DISEASES.

Dr. DAVIES: 20.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he is aware that in 1927, out of a total of 20 men invalided for rheumatic fever, 17 had served for less than two years and that out of a total of 79 men invalided for organic heart disease 40 had served for less than two years; and can he offer any explanation for this high incidence of rheumatic diseases?

Mr. ALEXANDER: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. It is not considered that the incidence of rheumatic diseases is unduly high when consideration is given to the early age at which recruits are received into the Navy.

VACCINATION.

Mr. MOSES: 23.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty how long it has been the practice to carry out quinquennial revaccination, as necessary of all personnel in the Navy; whether such revaccinations are compulsory; and whether he proposes to make any changes in the Navy regulations relating to the vaccination of naval recruits and dockyard apprentices under the age of 19 years who have not previously been vaccinated, in view of recent cases among the civil population of post-vaccinal encephalitis?

Mr. ALEXANDER: It has been the practice to carry out quinquennial revaccination of personnel of the Royal Navy, when going abroad, for many years. An order was issued on the 7th September, 1928, that revaccination of active service personnel should be carried out every five years (Admiralty Fleet Order 2216/28). No punishment or penalty is incurred for declining revaccination on conscientious or other grounds, but precautions are taken to prevent men not revaccinated from becoming a danger to the Service by landing in ports where there is danger of contracting smallpox (King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions 1417, 12). It is not proposed at present to make any changes in the Navy regulations relating to the vaccination of Naval recruits, in view of the fact that these young men are likely to be exposed to the danger of infection by the severe Oriental type of smallpox as soon as they
go to sea. The regulations relating to the vaccination of dockyard apprentices are under consideration.

Sir G. PENNY: How many of these men have objected to being revaccinated?

Mr. ALEXANDER: That question does not arise, and I must have notice of it.

CONTRACTS (FOREIGN GOODS).

Mr. ALBERY: 24.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty the nature of an Admiralty contract which was placed in the United States in July last where the difference in price amounted to 120 per cent. as compared with the lowest British tender?

Mr. G. HALL: The contract in question was for drill blocks and clamps of an American design. In the tender invitations, firms were asked whether they could offer any British-made substitutes, and only one firm offered a British article which was approximately 120 per cent. higher in price than the American article. The total value of the contract was small.

Mr. ALBERY: Is one correct in understanding that this was a very special kind of contract; and, in that case, does the hon. Gentleman think that his hon. Friend the Financial Secretary was justified in quoting it as an example of a case in which goods had to be bought abroad owing to the difference in price?

Mr. HALL: My hon. Friend was quite correct when he said that the amount involved was very small. I think my hon. Friend had in mind the fact that there was a general demand for these American blocks, as they are used in almost every tool-room in the country, and he thought that by calling the attention of the public to that fact, he might render a service.

Sir F. HALL: Does the hon. Gentleman think that it is in the interests of this country to placard a case of goods in this country costing 120 per cent. more than the price at which they can be obtained elsewhere?

Mr. HALL: It was the fact in that case.

Sir F. HALL: That is very bad. You do not tell all the facts.

Mr. ALBERY: 25.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty the nature of the principal contracts placed by the Admiralty abroad since the present Government came into office; and the total amount involved in all Admiralty contracts placed abroad during that period?

Mr. G. HALL: The principal foreign products obtained for the Navy since 1st July, 1929, have been corned beef, hemp and nitrate of soda. The total value of all contracts placed for foreign products (excluding oil fuel, which necessarily is largely of foreign origin) since that date is £60,000, of which the three items mentioned above account for £50,000.

Captain CROOKS HANK: Was any bounty-fed German wheat included?

ADMIRALTY (LEAVE).

Mr. KELLY: 16.
asked the Civil Lord of the Admiralty when the women employed by the Admiralty are to receive six days' leave with pay this year, as given by other Government Departments, in accordance with the Treasury decision?

Mr. G. HALL: Subject to the convenience of the Service, the women, as

Kenya Government Expenditure on Education.


—
1924.
1925.
1926.
1927.
1928.
1929.*




£
£
£
£
£
£


Administration
…
4,975
10,198
16,991
15,357
14,764
16,552


European Education
…
20,616
22,053
28,815
36,033
42,294
52,658


Indian Education
…
10,351
10,969
14,471
17,319
22,962
26,153


Arab and African Education
24,369
34,743
47,503
52,431
72,008
80,591


Total
…
60,311
77,963
107,780
121,140
152,028
175,954




(1924)
(1925)
(1926)
(1927)
(1928)
(1929) estimated.


* Estimated expenditure.

Note. —The figures given above are in each case those of normal recurrent expenditure. It is not possible on the information available to divide the Extraordinary Expenditure into expenditure for the various races but the total figures for each of the years under review are as follows:—


—
1924.
1925.
1926.
1927.
1928.
1929.†



£
£
£
£
£
£


Extraordinary Expenditure
—
1,622
5,962
9,506
10,355
14,055


† Estimated.

also the men, are to take the six days' leave as they require it in the present leave year.

Mr. KELLY: Does that mean that no matter what holidays they have had this year they will receive six days' leave with full pay this year?

Mr. HALL: No doubt these six days are in addition to other holidays.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA.

EDUCATION (EXPENDITURE).

Major POLE: 26.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will give figures showing the total expenditure by the Government on education in Kenya in each of the last five years and the estimated total expenditure in the present year; and what part of these amounts was devoted to the provision of educational services for Africans, Indians, Europeans and other communities, respectively?

Mr. LUNN: As the answer to this question necessarily involves a large number of figures, I will, with my hon. and gallant Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:

CRIME.

Rear-Admiral BEAMISH: 29.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will provide particulars as to the growth or otherwise of crimes committed against the person of white people in Kenya Colony; and if he is satisfied that the measures for the prevention of such crimes are adequate?

Mr. LUNN: Figures are not available in this country to show the number of crimes against the person of white people in Kenya as distinct from those committed against other races. In the year 1928, however, the total number of serious offences against the person reported, under the heading Murder, Attempted Murder and Culpable Homicide in settled and urban areas was only 38. Of this number, 34 cases were brought for trial before Court and 23 resulted in convictions. The answer to the second part of the question is in the affirmative.

Rear-Admiral BEAMISH: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that serious anxiety exists in the minds of the white population of the Kenya Colony in consequence of the constant recurrence of such crimes?

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the hon. Gentleman also aware that the women and children are in danger in Kenya to-day, just as in Johannesburg 30 years ago?

Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT: Can the hon. Gentleman assure us that there is no colour discrimination in the administration of justice in these territories?

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Has the hon. Gentleman any evidence to show that there is actually any increase in crimes against white persons in these Colonies?

Mr. LUNN: I do not think there is any increase. I think it is on the decrease.

Rear-Admiral BEAMISH: 30.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can give information concerning the trial of the natives who murdered Mr. Kenyon in the Thompson Falls district of Kenya Colony; and whether he has received proposals for the introduction of a system of communal fines to check the increase of crime against the person?

Mr. LUNN: A report on the circumstances of this case has been called for from the Governor of Kenya, but this has not yet been received. As regards the second part of the question, there is already a Collective Punishment Ordinance in Kenya, and I will send a copy of this to the hon. and gallant Member for his perusal if he so desires.

HORSES (IMPORTATION).

Brigadier-General CLIFTON BROWN: 33.
asked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the assisted scheme under the Empire Marketing Board for the importation of pedigree livestock into Kenya only covers cattle, sheep and pigs, and does not apply to horses; and, if so, whether he will amend the scheme to include horses, which at present cost 54 guineas to convey from this country?

Mr. LUNN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. These schemes are necessarily limited by the terms of the Empire Marketing Vote to exports which may be expected to lead to the increased marketing of food or raw materials in this country. They could not properly be extended to include horses.

Brigadier-General BROWN: In order to encourage the breeding of good class horses in this country, could the hon. Gentleman not allow reasonable passage money for horses as well as for other cattle?

Mr. LUNN: I do not think it would come within the power of the Empire Marketing Board to do that at present.

DISTURBANCE.

Brigadier-General BROWN: 35.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the reasons for the recent rising in Kenya have been investigated, and to what does he attribute it; and whether in view of the danger to the lives of our settlers and of more troops being necessary for their protection, he will review the native policy pursued for some years past and take steps to muzzle incitements to disorder in the vernacular native newspapers?

Mr. LUNN: There has been no native rising in Kenya, but only a collision between sections of two native tribes whose grazing grounds are contiguous. My Noble Friend, the Secretary of State for
the Colonies, has received an assurance from the Governor of Kenya that the Colonial Government are satisfied that the measures taken by the Government have removed any risk to residents in the neighbourhood to which they might otherwise have been exposed, and the Governor has reported that the situation is now satisfactory. In the circumstances, my Noble Friend does not propose to review native policy in Kenya in the direction suggested in the last part of the hon. and gallant Member's question.

Brigadier-General BROWN: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, though the Governor may be satisfied, a lot of our colonists and their wives who live in some of the wild places are still very anxious and nervous that these risings will affect them, and will he look into the question?

Mr. LUNN: I think the Government, upon a matter of this sort, would have to be advised by the Governor.

Mr. CHARLES BUXTON: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that native unrest, if any, is amply accounted for by fears of the deprivation of their land and other injustices, without reference to incitements to disorder?

NATIVES AND INDIANS.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 40.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received a communication from the Kikuyu Central Association; and why Sir Samuel Wilson, when inquiring in Kenya, did not inquire as to the native or Indian point of view?

Mr. LUNN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The suggestion that Sir Samuel Wilson did not inquire as to the Indian point of view in Kenya is not understood, and I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to Sir Samuel Wilson's Report, more particularly pages 24 and 25. As to the native point of view, Sir Samuel Wilson took the opportunity of discussing matters with the Acting Chief Native Commissioner, missionaries and others well acquainted with native affairs. Only in one case did he refuse to interview any native delegation. In that case, he had already received in writing the views of the body in question, a body which is not recognised by the Government of Kenya as representative of the tribe for
which it claims to speak, and he did in fact interview another delegation representing the same tribe.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Are we to understand that Sir Samuel Wilson has received the deputation from the Indian Congress?

Mr. LUNN: I think it is quite clear that he did.

NATIVE LANDS TRUST BILL.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: 44.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Kenya Native Lands Trust Bill has now received the approval of His Majesty's Government; and whether any new amendments have been made to the draft ordinance for presentation to the Kenya Legislature; and, if so, what are the principal points covered by such amendments?

Mr. LUNN: Yes, Sir: the Governor of Kenya has now been authorised to proceed with the Native Lands Trust Bill. Amendments in the Bill as previously drafted have been arranged by my Noble Friend with the Governor with the object of securing the fullest protection of native interests. These include provisions to the following effect:

(i) If land is taken away from a Native Reserve for public purposes, there shall be added to the Reserve an area equal in extent, and, as far as possible, equal in value, except in the case of land taken for the track of a road or railway, or merely for the site of a building, thus ensuring that the total area of a Reserve will not be diminished.
(ii) Fair compensation to be made to the natives affected by any exclusion of land from a Reserve so as to cover all disturbance or loss incurred by them.
(iii) Leases of land in a Reserve will be limited to 33 years, save in exceptional cases when, with the prior sanction of the Secretary of State, leases not exceeding 99 years, may be granted.
(iv) If, as a result of the consideration which is being given to the Report of the Commission on Closer Union in East Africa, a High Commissioner is appointed in East Africa, that officer will be substituted for the Governor of Kenya as President of the Central
1035
Board which will be set up under the Bill for the management and control of the land in the Native Reserves.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Are we to understand from that answer that the white settlers will still be allowed under this new legislation to have leases of land inside the native reserves on 99 years' leases and thus deprive the natives of that land?

Mr. LUNN: I should require notice of that question.

MUI TSAI SYSTEM (HONG KONG AND MALAYA).

Mr. GRAHAM WHITE: 28.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if his attention has been drawn to the continued sale of mui tsai in Hong Kong; and if he can now make a statement with regard to the policy of the Government with regard to the mui tsai system?

Sir GERVAIS RENTOUL: 55.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies when the White Paper showing what action has been taken by the Government of Hong Kong to deal with the problem of mui tsai will be published; and what is the estimated number of Chinese mui tsai now resident in British territory?

Mr. LUNN: The correspondence which my Noble Friend undertook to lay before Parliament is being published to-day as a Command Paper and will be obtainable in the Vote Office this evening. It will make clear to hon. Members the additional measures which are to be taken in hand by the Governor of Hong Kong to abolish the mui-tsai system. As regards the number of mui-tsai in the Colony it will be seen from the Governor's despatch of the 16th of May published in the Command Paper that it is not in his opinion possible to give an exact or even approximate figure, but he states that he has been very definitely assured by the leaders of the Chinese community that the number is not increasing but is diminishing. It is fair to assume that with the new measures to be introduced a figure will be forthcoming. The provision of wages is one of these measures.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Have we not previously had the assurance of the Governor of Hong Kong that he would put a stop to mui-tsai; and what guarantee have we that the measures at present proposed are likely to be more efficacious than those proposed in the past?

Mr. LUNN: I would refer any right hon. and gallant Friend to the Command Paper which will be furnished this afternoon, and which will give him full particulars of everything that has been done in the past. As to the future, I would leave it to be answered for, but in my judgment this system ought to be abolished.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: I am sorry to be persistent in this matter. Are the proposals now brought forward, the proposals of the Colonial Office here, or are they proposals of the Governor in Hong Kong who has failed in the past?

Mr. LUNN: The proposals are from both sources, and I might say that the Governor was, yesterday, meeting the district watch committee in order to see how far it was possible to make regulations to carry them out.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Do these measures include the problem of fresh mui-tsai coming in from Canton; and is it proposed to make representations to the Cantonese authorities?

Mr. LUNN: With regard to the regulations to carry out the business of abolishing the system, I think I must have notice.

Brigadier-General BROWN: Is it not a fact that in Canton they have stopped this system by means of registration of all these girls, and why not do the same in Hong Kong?

Mr. WHITE: 41.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he has any information concerning the existence of the mui-tsai system in any British dependency other than Hong Kong?

Mr. LUNN: As far as I know, Malaya is the only other British dependency in which the employment of girls known as mui-tsai exists amongst the Chinese community. Their employment is regulated by law which amongst other things forbids their employment under the age of
10 years, requires the payment of wages, and leaves them free to leave their employers at will. My Noble Friend and I wish, however, to be thoroughly satisfied that the system that exists in Malaya involves nothing in the nature of slavery, and inquiries of the Governor and High Commissioner are being made.

MALAYA (CIVIL SERVANTS' SALARIES).

Brigadier-General BROWN: 34.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware of discontent among the ex-service civil servants in Malaya in not having their salaries put upon the same basis as the cadets in the same service; and whether, as the Government of India have adjusted the similar case of their technical officers to meet the same situation, he will take some steps, either on the lines suggested by the Bucknell Commission or otherwise, to rectify the treatment of these men by the Government of Malaya?

Mr. LUNN: In April a complaint on behalf of the Ex-Services Association of Malaya was addressed to my Noble Friend's predecessor in office, who decided that after this lapse of time it was impracticable to reopen an issue, which had been carefully considered and decided soon after the War, without the risk of doing an injustice to many who had been appointed in the last eight or nine years. My Noble Friend has seen no reason to take a different view.

HONG KONG (SLAVE TRADE).

Mr. CECIL WILSON: 36.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received any information upon the reported discovery of a gang of slave traders in Hong Kong whose operations extended into China for securing the children in order to sell them in the British colony of Hong Kong?

Mr. LUNN: I have seen a Press account of this incident, and the Governor of Hong Kong has been requested to furnish a report by mail, which my Noble Friend hopes to receive this month. I will then ask my hon. Friend to repeat his question.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS (IRAQ).

Captain P. MACDONALD: 37.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a White Paper will be published setting out the new undertaking given by His Majesty's Government to the Government of Iraq regarding the application of the latter for admission as a State member of the League of Nations; and whether any new financial or military agreements are being negotiated with the Iraq Government or whether the existing treaty and subsidiary (agreements are to be held binding until the entry of Iraq into the League?

Mr. LUNN: Yes, Sir. A White Paper will be laid as soon as possible. With reference to the second part of the question, it is proposed to proceed on the basis of the existing instruments pending the entry into force of a new treaty between this country and Iraq upon the admission of Iraq to the League of Nations.

Captain EDEN: Do I understand that it will not come into force until the admission of Iraq to the League of Nations has taken place?

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Are we to understand from the last part of the answer that no new treaty is to be negotiated now, but that when Iraq enters the League, then a new treaty will be negotiated?

Mr. LUNN: I am not quite sure whether that is the position or not, but, if the right hon. Gentleman will put a question down, I will give him an answer.

CEYLON (FRANCHISE).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 39.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give an estimate as to the number of Indian coolies in Ceylon who are to be deprived of the proposed franchise by the modification His Majesty's Government have made in the Donoughmore Report; and why this modification was made?

Mr. LUNN: I cannot give a closer estimate than that contained in the Report of the Special Commission, namely, that some 40 to 50 per cent. of the Indians in Ceylon are permanent re-
sidents, and would therefore be entitled to the franchise, if otherwise qualified, under the proposals of His Majesty's Government. The reasons for the departure from the recommendations of the Special Commission are fully explained by the Governor in the correspondence recently presented to Parliament, and my Noble Friend has concurred in the Governor's views on this point.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is my hon. Friend aware that the entire coolie population are excluded from the franchise, although they were included in the Donoughmore Report, and can he say why a Labour Government have acted in this manner in face of a Report by a Conservative Commission?

Mr. LUNN: I should hope that that is not so, and that the Labour Government have not taken a course which may even be implied to have such a serious effect.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: But my hon. Friend is surely aware that this modification has excluded the most helpless part of the working population of Ceylon?

Mr. SKELTON: Has the hon. Gentleman made himself familiar with the correspondence which has been referred to?

Mr. LUNN: I do not see that I am called upon to answer questions not on the Order Paper.

AMANI INSTITUTE.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: 42.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the director of the Amani Institute has published a Report on the work of that institute since his appointment; and whether a copy of any such Report will be placed in the Library of the House?

Mr. LUNN: A Report of this nature by the Director of the Institute is now being printed. As soon as copies are available, one will be placed in the Library of the House.

COLONIAL VETERINARY SCHOLARSHIP SCHEME.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: 43.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the proposed school of tropical veterinary medicine, recommended by
Lord Lovat's Committee, will now be established; and what steps are being taken to improve the recruitment and training of veterinary officers for service under Colonial Governments?

Mr. LUNN: A decision on the recommendation of Lord Lovat's Committee on the Colonial Veterinary Services for the establishment of a School of Tropical Veterinary Science was deferred until the Report of the Departmental Committee on the reconstruction of the Royal Veterinary College at Camden Town was available. This Report has now been issued, and the question will be further considered in the light of the recommendations contained in it. It is hoped that it will be possible to bring the proposed Colonial Veterinary Scholarship Scheme into operation next year. All the Colonial Governments which were asked to contribute towards the expenditure involved have agreed to do so, and the Colonial Development Advisory Committee are now considering an application for a grant from the Colonial Development Fund to meet the one-third of the annual cost of the scholarships which was the portion that Lord Lovat's Committee recommended should be provided from United Kingdom funds.

FISHING INDUSTRY (COMMITTEE).

Major McKENZIE WOOD: 49.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that the new Committee which has been appointed to inquire into the fishing industry does not contain a single member engaged in that industry; and whether he will consider the possibility of adding a member or members with practical knowledge of fishing and the fish trade?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Dr. Addison): I have been asked to reply. In forming the Committee to inquire into the fishing industry, it was decided to follow the principles adopted in constituting the Cotton and Iron and Steel Committees of Inquiry, and not to have interests, as such, represented. It has been the experience of the Civil Research Committee that sectional representation is not conducive to the best results.

Mr. FOOT: Why was not the same principle adopted in setting up to the Licensing Commission?

Major-General Sir ROBERT HUTCHISON: Have any special arrangements been made for visiting Edinburgh to take Scottish evidence?

Dr. ADDISON: Yes, it was proposed—I do not know about sitting in Edinburgh—to sit at the various ports as may be found desirable. As regards the other question, this is an inquiry into the conduct of an industry, which is a separate and distinct issue.

Mr. FOOT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the setting up of the Licensing Commission was—[Interruption]?

Mr. SPEAKER: That is a different question.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA.

GOVERNMENT POLICY (MINISTER'S STATEMENT).

Captain P. MACDONALD: 50.
asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the (message of the First Commissioner of Works to Indian comrades and friends; whether it represents the policy of His Majesty's Government; and, if so, for what reason it was not issued under the authority of the Secretary of State for India?

Mr. HANNON: 48.
asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to the message addressed to the people of India by the First Commissioner of Works; and whether this message represents the policy of His Majesty's Government?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Philip Snowden): The statement referred to was made by my right hon. Friend as a personal appeal and contains nothing inconsistent with Government policy.

Sir KINGSLEY WOOD: Was the Secretary of State for India consulted before this message was sent?

Mr. SNOWDEN: I think that that is a question which might be addressed to the Secretary of State for India. I am answering for the Prime Minister.

Sir K. WOOD: May I ask the Secretary of State for India?

The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Wedgwood Benn): The statement made by the First Commissioner of Works has my entire approval, and it has made an excellent impression in India.

Sir WILLIAM MITCHELL-THOMSON: Shall we have the advantage of hearing the First Commissioner of Works explain it in the discussion tomorrow?

Mr. SKELTON: May we take it that the Indians like these expressions of the right hon. Gentleman's love more than the people of this country do?

Captain MACDONALD: May I ask why this question was not answered by the Minister to whom it was addressed, as the answer which I have received is quite unsatisfactory?

Mr. SNOWDEN: I do not quite understand the reason for the hon. and gallant Member's question. I stated that I was answering the Prime Minister's questions in his unavoidable absence.

EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD.

Major POLE: 67.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether he will state the total amount contributed by India towards the expenses of the Empire Marketing Board since its inception, the number of applications for grants received from Indian bodies, and the amount so applied for sanction by the Board, and if he will give information as to the number of Indians employed in an advisory capacity in connection with the Board's educational work in this country and other parts of the Empire, and in connection with the other activities of the Empire Marketing Board?

Mr. LUNN: The expenditure of the Empire Marketing Board is met entirely from moneys provided by Parliament and no contribution to the Board's expenses is received from the Government of India or any other part of the Empire. Three suggestions for specific marketing investigations put forward on behalf of India have been approved, involving a total expenditure from the Empire Marketing Fund approaching £3,000, while an important project for scientific research is now under consideration. No Indians are employed
directly by the Board which relies upon obtaining any special advice which it may require regarding India through that country's representative on the Board.

JAMAICA.

Mr. BOYCE: 52.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies why the former Government House at Spanish Town, Jamaica, commonly called Old King's House, is still un-restored; when action will be taken by the Government of Jamaica to ensure the preservation of this historical monument; and what is the amount of the recent Budget surplus in Jamaica?

Mr. LUNN: My Noble Friend has addressed inquiries on this subject to the Governor of Jamaica. Pending the receipt of his reply, I am not in a position to answer the first and second parts of the hon. Member's question. The financial year 1928–29 closed with an estimated deficit on the year's working of £152,866. During the current year, expenditure is anticipated to exceed revenue by £101,692. These deficits are being met from the previously accumulated surpluses of the Colony.

Mr. BOYCE: Will the hon. Gentleman inform me of the nature of the reply when he receives it?

Mr. LUNN: I will.

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT SCHEMES.

Mr. BOYCE: 53.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies how many schemes and at what estimated cost have been sanctioned by Sir Basil Blackett's Committee under the recent Colonial Development Act?

Mr. LUNN: The Colonial Development Advisory Committee have recommended that six schemes submitted to them should be assisted, by way of grant or by way of loan, from the Colonial Development Fund. The estimated total cost of these schemes is approximately £4,400,000. The estimated advances from the Colonial Development Fund, whether by way of loan or grant, amount to £1,020,310, which would be spread over a period of years.

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: Will the particulars of this scheme be published?

Mr. LUNN: Yes.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE (MAURITIUS).

Sir G. RENTOUL: 54.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state what is the estimated annual value of the preference given by Mauritius on goods of British manufacture entering their market and the corresponding value of the preference on Mauritius sugar imported into Great Britain?

Mr. LUNN: As the answer is rather long and contains a number of figures I will, with the hon. Member's permission, publish it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:

The difference between collections at full rates of duty and preferential rates in respect of goods produced or manufactured in the United Kingdom and imported there from into Mauritius during the last three years amounted to approximately £l,900 in 1926, £3,700 in 1927 and £9,800 in 1928. With regard to Mauritius sugar delivered for home consumption here the difference between full rates and preferential rates averaged approximately £1,000,000 per annum over the last three financial years.

IMPEBIAL ECONOMIC CONFERENCE.

Sir G. RENTOUL: 56.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Crown Colonies, Protectorates', and Mandated Territories will be separately and directly represented at the Imperial Economic Conference to be held at Ottawa or elsewhere next year?

Mr. LUNN: The arrangements for the holding of the next Imperial Economic Conference are not yet sufficiently far advanced to enable me to make any statement at present as to how the Colonies, Protectorates and Mandated Territories will be represented.

UGANDA (COTTON COMMISSION'S RECOMMENDATIONS).

Mr. MARJORIBANKS: 57.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state what action is contemplated, if any, to give effect to the recommendations of the recent Cotton Commission in Uganda?

Mr. LUNN: The Report of the Commission is still under consideration by the Government of Uganda. As an interim measure an Ordinance has been enacted in the Protectorate under which the approval of the Government is required for increasing the ginning capacity of any existing ginnery; but I am not in a position to indicate when it will be possible to come to decisions regarding the major recommendations made in the Report.

BRITISH EAST AFRICA (TARIFFS AND RAILWAY RATES).

Sir JOSEPH LAMB: 58.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received any Report regarding the results of the recent conference between the Governments of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika regarding Customs tariffs and preferential railway rates; and whether any Report of this conference will be published?

Mr. LUNN: The conference to which the hon. Member refers is not due to take place until early in January next.

TANGANYIKA (SIR SAMUEL WILSON'S REPORT).

Sir ROBERT HAMILTON: 59.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received from the Governor of the mandated territory of Tanganyika a despatch containing the Governor's views on Sir Samuel Wilson's Report; and whether he intends to give it publicity?

Mr. LUNN: My Noble Friend has not received a despatch giving the views of the Governor of Tanganyika on Sir Samuel Wilson's Report at large, but he has received a telegraphic communication from Sir Donald Cameron emphasising the objections set out in his note printed in Appendix IV of the Report.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS.

Mr. SEXTON: I wish to ask a question on a point of procedure. In view of the ever-increasing number of questions on the Order Paper, and the ever-increasing number of supplementary questions, would it be possible for the House to come to some mutual agreement to apply the same limit to the number of supplementary questions as is applied to the number of printed questions which a Member may put?

Mr. THURTLE: In view of the fact that we have not reached Question No. 70 on the Order Paper to-day, may I submit to you that you convey in a very delicate way to Ministers that the longer replies should be circulated and not read?

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: May I also ask your ruling with regard to this point? To-day, there are 124 questions on the Order Paper, and at the beginning of Question Time a quarter of an hour, I think, was taken up by a Committee of the whole House going into the Birmingham Corporation Bill. On such an occasion, ought it not to be in your power to lengthen Question Time by the amount of time taken up at the beginning over a Bill of that character?

Mr. SPEAKER: I will reply to the last question first. I would remind hon. Members that what took place at the beginning of Question Time to-day occurs very rarely, and I do not think it is necessary to alter the Rules on that account. As to the other point, I am always living in hope that so many supplementary questions will not be asked, but it must be remembered that this is the beginning of the Session, a period when hon. Members are more inquisitive, and I do not think it will be necessary to make any change.

Mr. REMER: May I ask whether it would be possible to arrange always to have 80 questions answered, so that an hon. Member whose question was numbered 79 would know that it would be answered?

Mr. SPEAKER: I do not think there is any occasion to make such an arrangement.

Mr. HAYCOCK: Is it not possible to arrange something approximating to fair play on questions? [HON. MEMBERS:
"Order!"] I am asking a question. Is it not possible to ration questions? There are hon. Members who are asking three questions every day, and is that fair?

Commander BELLAIRS: Is it the case that the blame rests entirely on the Members who ask supplementary questions? Is it not sometimes the case that they do not get full and clear answers from Ministers?

Mr. SPEAKER: I do not think it would be wise for me to begin to impute blame to anyone.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS.

LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS.

Dr. BURGIN: I beg to give notice that, this day four weeks, I shall call attention to the need of the Limitation of Armaments and the Co-ordination of our Defence Forces, and move a Resolution.

ECONOMY.

Sir VICTOR WARRENDER: I beg to give notice that, this day four weeks, I shall call attention to the need for economy in State and Local Expenditure, and move a Resolution.

INCIDENCE OF RATING.

Mr. SEXTON: I beg to give notice that, this day four weeks, I shall call attention to the question of the Incidence of Rating, and move a Resolution.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.

Mr. C. W. E. BROWN: I beg to give notice that, this day four weeks, I shall call attention to the question of the extension of Unemployment Insurance to agricultural workers and move a Resolution.

ACCIDENTS IN MINES.

Mr. GORDON MACDONALD: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the heavy loss of life and the large number of non-fatal accidents in coal mines, and is of opinion that every possible step should be taken without delay to secure the fullest protection possible to those engaged in this dangerous industry.
I propose this Motion, not because I think I shall be able to give any new information to the House, and not because I desire to indulge in any violent denunciation of any individual or any Government Department, but simply because I think that a discussion of this question during the present Parliament may act as an incentive to the Government to take some action on this question of accidents in mines. This subject has been discussed on a number of occasions during the last Parliament, but I regret to say that the results have been very unsatisfactory. Discussions have taken place and we find ourselves in the position that things have become worse instead of better as regards accidents in mines. I do not intend to weary the House with statistics, and I rather agree with what was said a week ago by the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) that statistics are the most deceptive things in the world.
The figures I want to refer to are those dealing with the 0number of accidents for the two years prior to the commencement of the increased working hours and the number for the two following years. There is a great danger in taking figures the wrong way. The mining industry is one in which if you simply take totals you do not get anywhere and you must analyse the figures. I will take the totals for 1924 and 1925 and compare them with the totals for 1927 and 1928. These figures may appear to show that things are getting better, but when you examine them at the rate of accidents per thousand, fatal and non-fatal, you will find that things are getting worse. For the year 1924 the number of fatal accidents was at the rate of 10.85 per thousand. For the year 1925 the rate was 10.28, for 1927 10.33, and for 1928 8.91.r
Those figures seem to give the impression that we are making headway, but let us consider what has actually happened. Owing to modernisation of
the working of mines, we have increased the output with a reduced personnel. Take, for example, the years 1924 and 1925. The rate per thousand is 1.11 in 1924 and 1.15 in 1925. For the two years after the Eight Hours Act was introduced in 1927, that is the year after the increased working hours, the percentage was 1.25 and in 1928 it was 1.18. Consequently you get a state of things under which the Government increased the working hours and they make things worse as regards the number of accidents. The increased working hours has resulted an aggravation of the accidents question, and the only hope of dealing effectively with that subject is to get the working day reduced to the point where it was before the last increase of the working hours took place.
Take non-fatal accidents. In 1924 the total was 11,937; in 1925, 10,622. Those are the two years immediately preceding the extension of the working hours, and the rate per thousand works out for 1924 at 158.8 and for 1925 159.3. Take the two years immediately following. In 1927 the total was 9,338 and in 1928 8,347, the percentage per thousand being in 1927, 167.2 and in 1928 170. Those figures might give the impression that we have been making headway, but let me point out that in 1924 the figures were 158.8 and in 1925 159.3. It will be seen that in those few years the rate per thousand increased from 167.2 in 1927 to 170 in 1928. This shows that you had between 1925 and 1928 an increase of 11 per thousand in non-serious accidents and the same applies to serious accidents.
4.0 p.m.
As regards non-fatal serious accidents, I want to ask the Secretary for Mines to give serious attention to the question as to whether the increased working hours in mines has not been responsible for the increase of accidents. I do not say whether the result is subsequent to the increased working hours or consequent upon it. I do not suggest that the increase per thousand in the number of accidents is a direct result of the eight hours day, but I suggest that the question of the effect of the increased working hours should be carefully examined from the point of view of the increase in the number of accidents in mines. I would like to refer to the places where these accidents have happened. When you get underground you find that the majority
of the accidents happen at the coal face. Generally speaking the coal face worker is on piece rates, and the fact that the greatest number of accidents take place at the coal face suggests that there is some connection between the accidents and the paying of piece rates. I know from actual experience where the danger lies. Some of the inspectors suggest that simply because the miner has become so accustomed to his work he does not take necessary care. I do not object to that construction, but I do know that it is not the main reason for the accidents. The main reason is that the miner is paid by tonnage, and in many cases the rate is so low, and he needs such an output, that at times he takes unnecessary risks. I direct the attention of the Minister and the Government to the question whether piece rates at the coal face, as they involve so much danger, ought not to be discontinued.
I find that all the inspectors in all the divisions are now suggesting that we ought to change our supports from the present timber supports to steel supports. In some of their reports they give instances where the change has proved beneficial from the point of view of accidents. I think the Minister ought to deal with the question definitely. If it is true that steel supports safeguard life and limb, as against timber supports, there ought to be a definite instruction sent out that steel supports are to displace the timber supports. Another point that I want to emphasise is in relation to accidents on the haulage. Here we have employed boys, the majority under 16 years of age. I realise that it is difficult for the Minister to take action that would eliminate this boy labour as things are to-day, but I suggest that the question of haulage ought to be dealt with.
It was my job a few months ago to deal with the question of travelling from the working place to the pit bottom. I suggested certain action, but the management did not agree. The men, in some cases two miles underground, were compelled to stay at the working place till 3 o'clock and then had to walk to the pit bottom. The manager defied the divisional inspector. An inspector in another division, Mr. Carey, of Cardiff and Newport, in one of his reports states this:
With regard to the accidents which occur whilst the men are walking out from work at the end of the shift, much has been said and is being done towards an entire elimination of this type of accident. Before I recommended the fixing of walking time and a total stoppage of the haulage ropes during those times there were as many as approximately a dozen men killed during the time. I am glad to report that the action taken in 1924, when the arrangements referred to above were made has resulted in a steady diminution of fatalities, and would, I am satisfied, have eliminated fatalities altogether were it not for the non-observance of regulations by those who were killed.
Where the haulage rope is run for winding coal to the final moment, it allows no travelling time. That fact in itself may not be a temptation, but it does suggest to the man who has to walk miles underground that his working day is to be increased owing to the refusal of the management to stop the haulage. As I have said, there is one divisional inspector who has insisted on stopping the haulage to allow the men to travel.
I want to refer also to the question of shaft accidents. These are accidents which can prove to be a tremendous loss to the mine. We have had a few in Lancashire. Fortunately coal was being wound at the time. Had we been winding men it would have meant that the whole of them would have been hurled to eternity. The same inspector, Mr. Carey, emphasised another point. He has found in his division that the use of an anti-corrosive rope has saved life and limb. It has been found in Lancashire and other districts that owing to the unsuspected internal corrosion ropes have broken, although externally they had the appearance of being in good condition. What this inspector suggests is that an anti-corrosive rope would not deceive an inspector, that when an inspector examined a rope he would find out whether there was danger of internal corrosion more easily than he could do in the case of the other type of rope. He says that the anti-corrosive rope would not only save life, but would prove an economical proposition to the colliery owners.
A further question is this: You have your regulations. With regard to number there is certainly no increase. Two or three have been changed and some have been cut out because they were almost obsolete. What we have to con-
sider, however, is that the safety of life and limb is not determined by regulations entirely; it is determined by the proper carrying out of the regulations. The chief person at the colliery to see to the carrying out of regulations is the fireman or deputy. A question that I ask is, Is the deputy always a man of such ability and knowledge as to make him efficient in his work? I would like to compliment the last Government for setting up a Departmental Committee to deal with this question of qualifications. It was a step in the right direction. I do not wish to cast any suspicion on the ability of the fireman of to-day, but I do think that to ensure the proper qualification of firemen is a step in the right direction. The making of such qualifications essential would in itself result in better firemen.
There is another aspect of the case. Are the managements not being permitted to add to the statutory duties of firemen to too great an extent? I can describe exactly what a fireman does from start to finish of the day. Far more time is taken up in dealing with questions apart from the regulations. The fireman has statutory duties laid down. If he is to carry out those duties efficiently the work will take the major portion of his time. The "good" fireman at any colliery is the fireman who can show the greatest output per man employed in the district that he supervises. I agree that we cannot expect firemen to be employed entirely in carrying out regulations, and that the management have a right to expect some other little work, but only when a fireman can carry out his statutory duties in a portion of his time ought he to be expected to do any other kind of work at all. Suppose that a fireman gives satisfaction on the output side by neglecting the statutory side. He is continuously employed. But let him change round and let him prove to be an efficient fireman on the statutory side, let him insist on regulations being carried out thoroughly and let him neglect the output side. You will soon hear about his dismissal. I could give the names of men, six at one colliery, who were discharged within 12 months. There was no blemish against their name, they had never been accused of neglecting their statutory work, but they were discharged because they could
not show the output per man that the management expected.
These are days when in this House we are repeatedly discussing the figures of unemployment. Here you have a fireman with a wife and a number of children dependent on him. He knows that if he loses his job his boys and girls are to be handicapped and to suffer. He therefore tries to avoid taking any action that might displease the management. The danger is that if he does insist on carrying out his duties in a statutory sense he will be dismissed. The Firemen's Association have met the Minister more than once and have put forward a very reasonable suggestion, and that is that the firemen be allowed to appeal. The Minister ought to insist that the manager who discharges a man responsible for seeing to the safety of a mine be compelled to give satisfactory reasons to the Minister for the discharge, and that the man concerned be allowed to stand his trial too. We are told that this would endanger discipline. Would it? In the police force does the right of appeal to the Watch Committee endanger discipline? Has the authority of a Chief Constable been weakened at all because some officer under his supervision has claimed the right of appeal to a Watch Committee? It should not be forgotten that the policeman of the mine is the fireman. I hope that the Government will consider seriously the granting of a right of appeal to an Appeal Board by deputies or firemen who are discharged. In many cases there is no reason whatever on the statutory side for the discharge.
There is another aspect of the larger question to be considered. Apart from the injuries to the body caused by accidents we have to deal with the very serious menace to the miner known as nystagmus. At the present moment there are 9,775 men in this country suffering from nystagmus, a disease which endangers the physical and nervous strength of every sufferer. It is about time that something was done with these men. When they make a slight recovery and are able to do some light work they find themselves faced with total unemployment. They are refused work at the collieries where they were unfortunate enough to become victims of the terrible disease.
These and other questions will be elaborated by subsequent speakers. Reviewing the whole question, I would remind the House that the bulk of the Regulations governing mining life to-day were made in 1911. Since that date mining life, especially underground, has been revolutionised as a result of the introduction of mechanism—electricity, conveyers and coal-cutters—to a greater extent than ever. The Secretary for Mines and the Government might consider seriously taking legislative action to deal with the situation. They might, if necessary, appoint a committee of inquiry for the purpose of consolidating all the Statutory Orders since 1911, and then produce an up-to-date Mines Regulation Act. I should like to tell the Secretary for Mines that I have the support of the present Prime Minister in putting forward this suggestion. The right hon. Gentleman, speaking on a similar Motion to this in the House on the 31st March, 1925—and, although the side of the House on which he sits has been changed, his views on this question will not have changed—said:
I do not think the regulations are quite as good as they might be, and one of the disappointing things in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Mines is that he does not seem quite to have made up his mind about legislation; he told us there might be some legislation—he was not sure. Surely, he ought to be sure. Since 1911 there have been scores of committees and inquiries into mining conditions, explosives and explosions, and all sorts of things. Does my right hon. Friend mean to tell me that, as a residuum from those committees and inquiries, he has not discovered a very great necessity for the alteration of mining legislation in some important respects? I know his predecessor thought, in view of the experience gained since the 1911 Act, there was enough to justify this House in spending some time in amending it and bringing it up to date.
Then he said, and I expect the Secretary for Mines will remind him of his having said it:
Therefore, I do beg my right hon. Friend and the House as well to realise that these monthly figures of accidents in mines, fatal and non-fatal, impose upon the House a responsibility which it cannot fulfil unless it steadily works away at the whole question of the causes of accidents and produces legislation, administration, staffs or whatever is necessary in order to increase the security of our miners' lives."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st March, 1925; cols. 1267–8, Vol. 182.]
Here we have the support of the present Prime Minister on the question of going into the whole of the Regulations and bringing them up to date. If it be a committee of inquiry that is decided upon, I do ask that all the interests concerned be adequately represented. Such a committee would do far more good than a Departmental committee. On a Departmental committee you do not get the point of view of those actually engaged in the mining industry. I ask that a committee of inquiry may be set up and may bring before this House ere long some definite suggestions with regard to legislation or increased staffs to deal with this question of accidents in mines.
It is very important to remember what is involved. When I tell the House that from time to time men seek guidance of me who at the moment are suffering from total incapacity, who will never be able to work any more, whose income to-day, including everything, is 27s. a week, who have to keep a wife and five little children, and in order to do so have to seek Poor Law relief, the importance of this matter to miners will be realised. In addition to the physical sufferings consequent upon accidents, these men, in some cases for weeks, in others for months, in others for years, and in some cases to their dying day, are compelled to live on an insufficient income simply because they happen to have been the unfortunate victims of accidents. During the 1926 stoppage, our local infirmary had more vacant beds than had ever been known before. Because the mines were not working, the beds were empty, while when the mines are working it is not possible to get a bed there at any price. One does not want "sob-stuff" or sentiment; there is no need for it on this question; but I want the House to realise that the position of the injured miner is so deplorable that, surely, it is time that something definite was done to deal with it. The position has become gradually worse from day to day. I ask that the matter be seriously considered by the Minister, and, if necessary, by the whole Government, and that they agree at an early date to bring forward definite suggestions that will decrease the present enormous number of fatal and non-fatal accidents.

Mr. ROWSON: I beg to second the Motion.
In doing so, I crave the indulgence of the House that has been given so generously to other new Members on the occasion of their first speeches. I know that this subject has been discussed in this House as often as any subject relating to industry. The records show that the miners' Members have repeatedly brought this matter before the House, and I know that there is very little that is new that can be said upon it; but, nevertheless, as my hon. Friend has said, there has not been any diminution in the number of accidents. Like my hon. Friend, I do not want to indulge in "sob-stuff." Both he and I, as working miners, have seen terrible things happen underground, but the experience of both of us, and of many other miners' Members on these benches, is that the time when one is really brought face to face with this matter in all its awful, tragic reality is when one becomes a miners' trade union official, and has repeatedly to deal with such cases as they arise. One then sees in actuality the things that my hon. Friend outlined in he closing remarks.
I want to repeat what he has said. I am convinced that the mines regulations are not being carried out as they ought to be, and I am convinced that they are not being carried out as they can be. I do not want to begin flinging charges first at one and then at the other, but I do want to corroborate what my hon. Friend has said regarding the duties of firemen in particular. It has often been reported to us by our own men, and the information has been brought to us by the firemen themselves, that in some cases the fireman will have as many as 30 or 40 shots to fire in a day in addition to his statutory duties. I submit that this is a point to which the mines inspectors' attention should be drawn, because, under the regulations, the mines inspector has power to take action and at least to investigate the duties which the fireman has to perform in addition to those which are considered to be statutory. If the inspectors would carry out their duties and if inquiries were made in certain instances, there would be a good deal less of this kind of work done by firemen.
We shall probably be told in reply that our opinions are not held by everybody connected with the mining industry.
Personally, I may be a bit conservative in the views that I hold on this point, but I have been convinced for some time that it would be better if electricity for power purposes were not used in coal mines. The regulations themselves recognise the danger attendant upon the use of electricity for power purposes. When the regulations lay it down that, if there is l¼ per cent. of inflammable gas present in the air, all electric current must be switched off, it shows that even the Mines Department recognise that here is a probable danger in the mines. In my opinion, there would be very few places where electricity would be used for power purposes if that regulation were strictly carried out. It is all very well for those responsible to tell us, after an accident has happened, that a screw or a bolt or a nut is loose and out of place, and that you get open sparking, and fusing, and that kind of thing. It is all very well to tell us that gas was tested for and none was present. But it is a very peculiar thing to me that the gas happens to be present just at the time when the sparking takes place. I would suggest to the head of the Mines Department that here is a reason for making some amendment as to the qualifications of firemen. My views on electricity, which I submit in all humility, may be wrong, but, if we have to have electricity in the mines for power purposes, I suggest that an extra qualification is necessary for firemen in addition to hearing, seeing, air measurement and gas testing, and that they should be qualified to supervise and take effective charge of areas in which electrically driven coal-cutting and conveying machines are installed.
My hon. Friend, in moving this Motion, referred to the question of piece rates. I do not want to dogmatise on this matter, because I suppose that both he and I, when, not so very long ago, we were working at the coal face, would have needed as much conversion to the day wage system as anyone engaged under it to-day, just because of the few shillings that one is enabled to earn above the day wage; but I have been compelled to take a different view as a result of my experiences as a trade union official. There has been only one colliery in the whole of my district which has been entirely run on time wages. I have had a miners' lodge under my charge as
miners' agent since 1923, and here again I can corroborate the statement made by my hon. Friend, that the piece rate system is a possible source of aggravation of the number of accidents in mines. Only those who have worked under it know the awful risks that are taken. They know of failure to set timber on the part of the miner, who sometimes neglects it for a few minutes in order to get out a truck of coal or catch another run, and if in the meantime he has failed to set the necessary timber, he may get trapped and be seriously injured or even killed. We are not dogmatising, but are asking for an inquiry; but the piece rate system, with its hurrying, scurrying, scuffling methods, causes men to take unnecessary risks so that they do not give that consideration to the circumstances in which they are working which is really requisite.
It may be information to those Members who are trade union officials in connection with the Miners' Federation, but at the colliery which I previously mentioned, the Swan Lane Colliery, Hindley Green, piece rates have never been adopted for any of the classes of workers. They have worked 31 years, and during the whole of that time not a single man or boy has been carried out dead. That is a matter for serious consideration by us, by the Miners' Federation, by the Mines Department, and by the Government. It is true that they have had three cases of people who have been injured underground which ended fatally, but two of those deaths were caused by septic poisoning supervening at a later stage. If that be the experience of one colliery, it is, as I say, a matter worth the consideration of the Mines Department.
I only intended to speak for 10 minutes, and I do not think I will carry on any further. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on."] I will conclude by saying that what has been put forward by the hon. Member who moved the Motion and by myself and the statistics which have been given by the Mover, warrant the Mines Department in taking action. If by the fact that this question has been raised to-day, we can get on overhauling or remodelling of some of the mines regulations, I shall be perfectly satisfied that this effort has been worth while.

Sir HERBERT SAMUEL: The House has listened with great interest to a maiden speech from the hon. Member who has just sat down, and I feel sure that he has the right to feel that he has held the attention of the House, not only by the importance of the matters with which he has dealt, but by the cogency and lucidity with which he has presented them for our consideration. We shall all join in congratulating him on making his first appearance on the Floor of the House. If I venture to follow the hon. Member in this matter, it is because on two occasions I have had special reason to be brought into close touch with this problem. For some years I was Under-Secretary at the Home Office when the mines inspection was under the Home Department, and these matters occupied a considerable part of my time. More recently, I had the honour to be the Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, which made a very close investigation of this question, which we at once perceived was of vital importance to the whole mining community.
In connection with the Report of the Royal Commission, I thought it would be interesting to make a calculation to see what was the expectation of the average miner of having to suffer, during the course of his working life, from more or less serious accidents. This calculation was put into the Report of the Commission, and I, will give it now to the House in a somewhat different form. Imagine 100 miners, who spend the whole of their working lives in the pit, going in as boys and coming out at a time when their working lives, for natural causes, are likely to be over, say, when they have served 40 years in the pit, as, of course, many miners do in the course of their lives. According to the statistics at the present time, of those 100 miners, if they suffer, according to the average, the fortunes of the mining industry, four will have been killed; 18 of the 100 will have suffered a very serious injury, that is to say, injury such as 'a fractured skull or a broken limb; 16 of the 100 will have suffered from miners' nystagmus, a very painful, distressing and often disabling disease of the eyes; 16 will have had beat hand, beat knee, or beat elbow—miners' synovitis, a disease which may disable a man for a very long period, and perhaps altogether stop his working career. So that more than one-half of
the 100 in the period of their working life will, according to average, either have suffered death in the pit or serious injury, or nystagmus or those other special miners' diseases. In addition, on the average, every one of the 100 will have suffered seven accidents, involving more than a week of disablement; so that among that group of 100 men there will have been, in a period of 40 years, 700 minor accidents so-called, but each severe enough to lay a man away from his work for at least a week. That shows that there is a terrific total of accidents in this industry.
Of course, the community has long been aware of the special dangers of the mining industry, and for generations efforts have been made to increase its safety. Great results have accrued, particularly with regard to explosions. Fifty years ago explosions in the mines were, I will not say constant, but not infrequent, bringing sudden and widespread disaster to whole communities, wiping out perhaps scores, sometimes even hundreds, of human lives. These dramatic and tragic occurrences aroused the attention of the whole nation, and a very intensive effort has been made to put an end to them. That effort has been most remarkably successful. Science has brought the whole of its resources to bear on this problem of mining explosions. A great Department of State, the Home Office, through its inspectors year after year devoted its utmost efforts to the reduction of these explosions. The result has been that within the last half-century the death-rate from mines explosions has been reduced by nine-tenths. That is a most remarkable achievement, and those who minimise or do not fully realise the value of science and of State action in dealing with problems of this kind have here, in the reduction by nine-tenths of the number of deaths caused by mines explosions in half-a-century, an example and argument of great importance. So, also, with regard to shaft accidents; they have been reduced in the same period by five-sixths. That is satisfactory, and it is hoped that possibly further progress may be made in those directions.
There are, however, other classes of accidents where the situation is far from satisfactory. The total death-rate in the
mines from accidents below ground remains, and has remained for a number of years, unhappily, very constant. When the Royal Commission reported, they took the years 1922, 1923 and 1924, an average of three years, as their basis for comparison. We found that the death-rate per 1,000 below the ground from accidents was 1.13; in 1927, it was 1.25, and last year it was 1.18. There has been no progress in the last few years in that respect. Deaths from falls of earth remain a constant figure. Last year was slightly better than the year before, but in general round about 500 men are killed every year from falls of earth. In haulage accidents, the ratio has remained almost unaltered during the last 50 years, and last year 230 men were killed by these accidents. Thus, there are still these vast totals, and how vast they are and how serious the question is, is proved by the fact that the mining industry every year has to pay in workmen's compensation to its own employés no less than £3,000,000. That sum has to be paid out of the resources of the industry to the men, or to their families for the loss of the bread-winner. That means an average charge of 3d. on each ton of coal produced, and it is therefore the plain interest, as well as what is much more important, the clear human duty, of the industry and the State to co-operate in reducing still further the mining accidents.
The hon. Member for Ince (Mr. G. Macdonald), who moved this Motion in a very interesting speech, drew a connection between the increase in the hours of labour and the increase which he points out has occurred—according to his statistics, I have not checked them—since the lengthening of hours took place. I have no doubt those statistics are quite correct. It may be that there is an increase of accidents due to fatigue or strain, but one would expect that if the average man were below ground for a longer period, exposed to risks for a longer period, the number of accidents would be greater. To take an extreme and impossible illustration, suppose a mining community were working under ground only one hour in the day, they would suffer from many fewer accidents than if they worked eight hours. That is obvious. Therefore, if you extended the hours of work at the face from six or six-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half, natur-
ally the men would have a considerable percentage of longer time of exposure to risk, and therefore there would be an increase in the number of accidents. Correspondingly, if it were found practicable to reduce the hours of work, pro tanto accidents would be reduced.
The hon. Member said that the only right way to make this calculation was according to the number of men employed. I do not quite agree there, for the reason that if in one year the men are working full time they will have more accidents than if the same number of men are working short time, for the same reason as that which I have just given, namely, that if the men's general working time is three days a week and 1,000,000 men are employed, and if in another period 1,000,000 men are employed five days a week, you will have more accidents in the latter period than in the former. Therefore, the Commission found that the only right basis for the calculation of accidents was the number of man-shifts. They multiplied the number of shifts by the number of men, and based their statistics on that. I hope that the Mines Department in future will, so far as possible, present their statistical tables on that basis, because it is the only basis which eliminates extraneous considerations and thereby gives really comparable statistics.
The hon. Members who have spoken from their practical knowledge have pointed out that the increase of machinery in the mines—mechanical traction and transport, and the increase of electricity—tends to increase accidents. It certainly introduces new dangers which have to be guarded against, and I am sure the Mines Department is constantly on the watch to keep pace with any development in the industry in that direction and to introduce the necessary safeguards. It would be taking a very extreme course to say that, because electricity induces accidents or may cause danger, therefore electricity should be discouraged, and excluded from the coal mines. I doubt whether the economic position of the industry would permit of a measure of that character, but it does call for the most careful and scrupulous measures to prevent an increase of danger. I think, so far as I can judge, that the Mines Department is fully alive to that. As a matter of fact, the num-
ber of accidents directly due to electricity is, up to the present, rather remarkably small. There is need for close inspection; there is need, of course, for continuous care on the part of the miners themselves, and there is need for that for which the hon. Members have pleaded, the maintenance of a high qualification among the firemen and other sub-officials of the mines concerned with these matters.
Lastly, the hon. Members have mentioned miners' nystagmus. There, I think, the situation is very far from satisfactory and it is disappointing that so little progress has been made in dealing with this distressing and, as I have said, disabling disease of the eyes. I was responsible more than 20 years ago when at the Home Office for drafting and carrying through Parliament the provisions which, for the first time in any country in the world, brought industrial diseases on to the same footing as accidents and provided compensation for the workers who suffered from those diseases, and we included nystagmus in our schedule as well as the other miners' ailments which I have mentioned. The number of cases of nystagmus has shown an immense increase in recent years. The disease is found to be due mainly to insufficient lighting. Although the figures now are somewhat below the peak figures of seven or eight years ago, still last year there were 2,500 new cases of nystagmus—700 more than the year before. That is a very serious fact. Instead of our coping with this question successfully, as we have done with explosions and with shaft accidents, here the last year is far worse than the year before.
There are in the industry to-day nearly 10,000 men suffering from this disease of the eyes, and I am much surprised to find in the report of the Chief Inspector nothing at all about nystagmus, not a word. It is true that there is a committee sitting on the subject, but nothing is said as to the work of that committee, as to the results, as to the measures which are being taken, and I trust that the Secretary for Mines when he replies will not fail to tell us what is being done in connection with this most important matter. In general, I feel sure that every one in the House will agree that the Mines Inspector is the miners' best friend. He works very hard, very loyally,
with great skill and energy, to safeguard the life and limb of the miner. This House should, and will, I feel sure, most cordially, in every way support the efforts which have been made by the Department and its officers in this direction, and, I cannot doubt, will unanimously pass the Motion now being submitted for its consideration.

Mr. HOPKIN: I rise with diffidence to address the House on this subject when I look round and see so many of my hon. Friends who have spent their lives in the coal mines. But, owing to the fact that I have in my Division 5,000 or 6,000 miners who are in the anthracite district, I think that it is only right for them to be heard in this House. I had the advantage on Saturday of hearing what they think and what they would say if they could stand up in this House and address hon. and right hon. Members. The first point which they raised was the question of inspectors in mines. They are of the opinion that the inspectors are sufficient in number if only they were taken from their offices and made to do the work which they are primarily intended to do, namely, to inspect the mines. The miners feel that too much of their time is now occupied in office work; in being employed, so to speak, as clerks. The miners in this little village in West Carmarthen made the rather subtle suggestion that it would be far better if the inspectors, when they come down to the mines, instead of going straight to the office, would go straight to the lamp room, so that the men in and around the mine would know that the inspector was present. I feel that the miners do not want more inspectors in mines, but that they want an extension of the work of Section 16 of the Coal Mines Act, namely, an extension of the number of workmen inspectors. Under the present system, if the workmen require a mine to be inspected, they have to pay for the inspector. They also suggest that when an inspector comes to a mine he should be accompanied in every case, not only by an official of the colliery, but also by a workman. We have it stated by the inspector in almost every report from every district what splendid work these workmen inspectors do. For instance, Mr. Carey at Cardiff, reported:
Advantage continues to be taken by the men of the facilities granted them under
Section 16 of the Act to inspect the workings of the mines, and much good is done by these periodic inspections which are welcomed by many managers. Five hundred and twenty-five such inspections were made at 69 mines.
I have also a report of the inspector of the Swansea district which is couched in similar terms. The miners feel that after inspection has been made the inspector's report should be available for every man in the colliery, and that it should be placed in some common place on the colliery premises where every man could see exactly what the inspector has reported. I agree entirely with every word which has been said about the importance, or, if you like, the change of direction of the work of the firemen. They are now engaged more in speeding up the supply of coal than in doing the job for which they are paid, namely, safety work.
There is one point on which I found that the miners at this conference were particularly keen. It is the question of packing in the gobs. They say, that where you have poor packing you have poor ventilation and a greater danger from accidents. I find that Mr. Carey, again in his report, has observed two collieries—colliery "A" with good packing at the gobs, where you had no fatal accidents at all over a period of five years and six non-fatal accidents; and colliery "B" where, he says, over the same period with indifferent packing there were four fatal accidents and 10 non-fatal accidents. I most respectfully ask the Secretary for Mines to see to it that inspectors of mines should be directed to make a report as to the state of the gobs in every pit.
I think the hon. Member who introduced this Motion referred particularly to the question of steel rings. The Inspector for the Cardiff district pointed out in his report the advantages of these steel rings from the point of view of cost. I am told that it costs from 12s. 6d. to 15s. to put up a set of timber, and that this is the cost roughly of the same work in steel. I am told that experiments have been carried on for a distance of about 50 yards of airway which have been timbered and over 50 yards of airway where steel rings have been used, and that over a period of five years the use of steel rings has proved to be 30 per cent. cheaper. The
important thing to be considered by the House and particularly by hon. Members on this side of the House is that where you have an extension of steel rings you have fewer accidents.
There is an additional point which has been touched upon. It is the question of machinery. In the Swansea district, there are at present 68 coal cutting machines producing 463,000 tons of coal. In the Cardiff area, there are as many as 333 coal cutting machines producing 2,754,000 tons of coal. I would draw the attention of the Minister to the fact that there are no expert men to go round examining the machines. The only men who have anything to do with them are the coal cutters themselves, ordinary colliers, who are not expected to know much about the machines.
There is one aspect of the accidents and diseases caused in the mines which touches hundreds of men in my Division. It is the question of nystagmus. It has been stated in this House that there are 9,775 men who suffer from this disease. I think that much more money should be spent in order to try and do something to deal more effectively with this disease. A medical friend of mine is firmly convinced that the cause of this disease is due to gas and not to the position of working in the mines. I would suggest that the work of the committee, to which reference has been made, could be speeded up and that the men should know exactly what has been done in order to find out the causes of the disease.
I should like to refer to another problem. I have here the papers dealing with a collier in my district who suffers from anthracosis. Here are papers showing that he has made a claim for Workmen's Compensation and has been refused. He has been examined by five doctors. Two of them say he is suffering from silicosis and the other three say that he is suffering from anthracosis. What is the result? He gets nothing. We know that when a doctor makes a post mortem examination of the body of a man and finds that the lungs are black, he is prompted at first to say anthracosis, when, as a matter of fact, it is impossible to say whether the man has suffered from anthracosis or silicosis until the lungs are burnt, and it is found that there is silica dust
in the lungs. This is not all. If it is found that a man has died from silicosis, it must be shown that the stone contains 50 per cent. of silica. I think that this is a matter which the Minister ought to put right at once. Does it matter anything at all whether the stone contains 5 per cent., 50 per cent. or 90 per cent., if, in fact, the man has died through breathing this dust in the mines or in any quarry. Many things have been tried in order to prevent spontaneous combustion, including stone dusting, but I am quite aware, that where you have stone dusting in collieries you have a bigger percentage of chest complaints.
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There is a further question to which I would wish to draw the attention of the House. I have in my Division a colliery now in liquidation, called the S.R. Colliery at Cross Hands, in Carmarthenshire. What is the result of it being in liquidation? Here is a colliery which took upon itself the responsibility of providing workmen's compensation. There are over 41 cases of men there who since August of this year have not had one penny piece of compensation. On Saturday, I saw men there with one eye, one leg or one arm, and men who were totally disabled, and yet, because this colliery has failed, they have not a penny piece. The same thing applies to the International Colliery at Blaengarw, in Glamorganshire. I think that is a question which the Minister should look into.
Hon. Members on this side of the House will welcome a shortening of hours if for no other reason than that we know that with shortened hours there must be fewer accidents. In 1928, there were 1,009 fatal accidents, and 161,790 non-fatal accidents. Let us try to visualise what this means. It means a procession 35 miles long, four abreast and 1½ yards apart; at every 14 yards you have an ambulance, and at every 60 yards you have a hearse. The fatal accidents average on this basis over-two a day, and the non-fatal accidents 443 every day, 18 every hour, and one every three minutes. I speak in this Debate, not only because I represent a Division which is largely made up of collieries, but because, if the House will pardon me for saying so, it is the fact that all my relatives are working colliers. I myself had an uncle killed, a cousin crushed to death, and another cousin who
is stone deaf through working in water; and I would beg the House to concentrate on this most vital matter for the safety of the lives of thousands of the very best men in the country.

Dr. ETHEL BENTHAM: I cannot say that I am an expert on coal mining, but in my earlier life I was for several years practising in a mining district, and I had very intimate associations, which I have in many ways kept up ever since, with the conditions obtaining in mines and their effects upon the population. There is no doubt at all about the enormous incidence of accidents, both fatal and otherwise, upon the mining community. I remember that at the first Labour Conference to which I went, I was sitting opposite to the mining delegation; I could see 11 or 12 men, and there was not one of those 11 or 12 men who had a whole pair of hands. It is a curious coincidence perhaps that they were there together, but, of those 11 or 12 men opposite me, every one had a missing finger or a smashed wrist or some other effects of something which had happened in a coal mine. I have also, when I have been passing through colliery villages, noticed the effects on the minds of the inhabitants of the constant fear of the happening of an accident: even the backfiring of a car in the road will bring every woman from her door to see what that noise may mean.
As I say, I am not in the least expert in the management of the mines, but I do know one thing. Large numbers of the men and practically all the wives of those men say that the piece rate system is the very largest contributory cause of accidents. It is the necessity of working at top speed, which means the omission of many precautions which might have been taken, which brings about a good many of those accidents of which it is afterwards said that they were brought about by the omission of precautions on the part of the men themselves. I have also found in my fairly long experience that in many other trades piece rates are responsible, not only for accidents, but for ill health on the part of the worker and for a great deal of indifferent work. I wonder whether it would not be to the advantage of the whole country if competitive piece work were abolished in all trades, or at least in trades which, like this, involve danger to human life.
On the question of hours, the workers in every trade with which I am conversant—and I know a good deal about the conditions in many of them—always say that accidents, carelessnesses and other things of that kind occur late in the working day. In fact one worker put it to me quite definitely, "After five o'clock we are only just spoiling the stuff." I think that is true, and it means that one ought to consider very carefully the effects of over-long hours in such a laborious, difficult and dangerous trade as this. An hon. Member opposite spoke of the £3,000,000 of compensation which is paid. It is a terrible thing to think about, that we should be spending £3,000,000 a year in compensating people, and only partly compensating them, and indeed very insufficiently compensating them. Nothing at all that we can do will rectify the practical ruin and the lack of opportunities which are inflicted upon families as the result of such injuries, but it is a terrible thing to think that such an amount of compensation, and insufficient compensation, should have to be paid for accidents which I believe any real effort which did not take into consideration first and foremost and last the actual financial cost, would be able to prevent.
I cannot speak about electrical affairs. Of course, electricity is responsible in a number of ways outside mines for an enormous number of accidents. That is no reason, I believe, why electricity should be excluded, but we have to learn to take much more effective precautions, and certainly those precautions should not be scamped or skimmed or minimised in cases where the results of an accident are so widespread and so devastating.
With regard to nystagmus, I think most members of the medical profession—I cannot speak for the whole profession—do agree that it is the posture and the lighting conjointly which are the cause of that terrible disease, and it seems to me that it would be possible by concerted action to get real disinterested evidence upon that and to take measures—and it is for the national benefit that measures should be taken—to put an end to a disease which is I am sure quite preventable so long as we consider the lives of men and women and children and the national advantage of good health, instead of the narrow financial aspect of
the matter which precludes enough money being spent on the prevention of the disease and on the experiments which will bring about that prevention.

Colonel CLIFTON BROWN: The House will, I am sure, agree with me in congratulating the hon. Member for Islington (Dr. Ethel Bentham) on what I understand was her maiden speech, and we can all sympathise with the warm sympathy which she showed throughout the whole of that speech. I am certain that when she next takes part in our Debates her speech will be listened to with great interest.
I am in this difficulty in this Debate; practically all the hon. Members who have taken part in it are practical miners, but I myself am not one. I can speak only as a representative of a mining district, from personal knowledge of miners, and from personal knowledge of a great many people who get their living in the mines. But there was one point which did appear to me to open up a vista of profitable debate, and that was a point made with regard to steel props, which I thought was really important. Every inspector, I understand, now tells us that these props are a means of safety to the workers. If anything can be done to lessen the casualties which occur in mines, of course it ought to be done, and here we are touching upon one of the biggest causes of casualties in the mines. Although steel props may in fact be safer, the plain fact is that the men themselves do not like them very much. To start with, they are awkward things to set; they take a lot of time; and then—I do not know whether rightly or wrongly—the men themselves think that these steel props give no warning when anything is going to happen to the roof. Men who know tell me that when there is going to be a fall of stone or earth, you will get a, sound from the roof itself, and not by the cracking of the wood pit props, but still that superstition that you get a warning from wooden props still goes on; the men think that that is so; and therefore I join with the Mover of this Motion in asking the Secretary for Mines, if he is satisfied that steel props are a safety factor for the miners and do prevent falls of roof, to make it known throughout the country by every
possible means, and so eradicate this superstition.
That is my first point. There is one other about which I should like to ask for some information from the Secretary for Mines. The last time I spoke in this House on a mining matter was just after a very deplorable accident which happened in Northumberland, when water from an old mine broke through into a working mine and drowned a great many men. I know that when you are working in a valley where you suspect that there may be other workings full of water, you have to proceed with appliances in front of you to let you know where the water is. There are regulations for the safety of miners working in those areas; but there can be nothing which will be satisfactory unless we can get hold of the plans and maps of all the workings round about a mine. I know, of course, that it is difficult. I know that at the present moment it is by law compulsory to have those plans. I understand that if a mine closes down, all its working plans and so on are deposited with the Mines Department; but I know that there has been an effort by the Mines Department to get hold of maps and plans of old workings which were abandoned before it became compulsory to have plans, and I should like to ask whether, as the result of their efforts, the Mines Department have been able to find out the whereabouts of old and disused mines in the various minefields, so that this danger may be diminished? Nothing, of course, can be more distressing than the state of affairs in a mine when the water dashes through and floods it. I myself was present at the pithead after the flooding disaster near Newcastle, and saw the distress and anxiety of all concerned, and, of course, one would do anything one possibly could to prevent such a state of affairs arising again. Those are my two points; and I wholeheartedly support the Motion which is before the House.

Mr. TOM SMITH: While listening to the speeches to-day I have been wondering how times have changed. Some hundred years ago a Motion like the one now before the House would have been regarded as out of Order, because in those days it was not considered to be the duty or purpose of Parliament to in-
terfere with underground conditions. Later, as the result of a series of unfortunate explosions, coupled with the efforts of two or three Committees, one known as the Sunderland Committee and the other a committee of South Shields gentlemen, pressure was brought to bear upon the House, and in 1851 Parliament recognised the right of the Government to interfere so far as inspections of underground workings were concerned.
Statistics are inevitable in a Debate of this kind, but statistics do not tell the tragedy behind accidents in mines. When the right hon. Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) was speaking and dealing with statistics, my mind turned to statistics, and I would like to quote some in order to emphasise the progress which has been made in certain directions, and to show the work that lies before us in other directions. In 1880, roughly 50 years ago, 499 lives were lost through explosions of fire damp or coal dust. In 1928, the figure had fallen to 36. In 1880, through falls of ground, 493 lives were lost. Last year, through falls of ground, 496 lives were lost. In addition, 230 lives were lost last year through haulage accidents. Science, in its very useful research work, the experimental work that has taken place and the growing knowledge so far as chemistry is concerned, has done much to make the mines more safe from the point of view of explosions, and the direction of our efforts must largely be towards reducing the falls of ground. Last year, of the 496 lives that were lost through falls of ground we find that the number of lives lost at the coal face were 326 and the number of lives lost on the roads, 170.
There are a good many difficulties in explaining exactly what is the real cause of the loss of life at the coal face. Miners, as a class, are looked upon as being very conservative. You cannot have men working for two generations under timber suddenly converted to the idea of steel props. The hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken put forward certain objections which I have heard time and time again. The inspectors do not advocate the general use of steel props at the coal face. It might be well to quote an opinion as to the position regarding steel props, in order to indicate the view of the inspectors.
The report of the divisional inspector for Yorkshire, Mr. Hudspeth, says:
It may well be that conditions which are suitable for the use of wood props need variation if steel props, particularly those of a rigid type, are introduced. Generally, steel props show to best advantage where faces are moving rapidly and systematically.
I agree entirely with that point of view. If the idea of steel props is to be propagated, and if the miners working at the coal face could become convinced that they were essential to safety, it would be a good thing if colliery managements would invite their workmen to discuss these matters with them. Since last I addressed the House I have been engaged for four and a half years in dealing with the many problems of one part of the mining industry, and I have had to attend a number of pits where steel props have been introduced. So far as the use of steel props is concerned, a big body of mine workers are still unconvinced of their utility and value. Another phase of the question might be take into consideration, and that is the question of some payment for the extra work involved.
Let me give an example of the position. In the Yorkshire coalfield we have always looked upon a wood face bar as being worth 6d. Some three or four days before corning down to the House this Session I had to deal with negotiations at one of the largest pits in the country, where steel props and corrugated bars are generally in use, but when it came to the question of price, the most that could be extracted from the management was 3d. in the case of the steel bar, whereas at neighbouring pits nearly double that sum was paid for wood. I suggest that if some managers were not quite so mean when prices are being fixed, it would help towards making their mines a little more safe. While there may be controversy regarding steel props there can be no doubt of the value of steel arches. I wonder how many lives would have been saved and how many accidents would have been avoided if we had had a more extensive use of steel arches. Anyone who has been inside a pit—I believe the late Secretary for Mines (Commodore King) availed himself of the opportunity of inspecting the inside of a pit, and I am extremely pleased that he did so and I wish other people would do the same—must admit
that steel arches are of considerable benefit. Not only do they give extra protection to the sides and the roof but they make for better roads, so that the haulage lads can move about more freely. A good road makes for safety and speed. I would urge those colliery managers who have not seen steel arches in operation to avail themselves of the opportunity of doing so. There ought to be more attention paid to the use of steel arches than has been the case in days gone by.
With regard to supervision, economy in production has largely resulted in the district firemen and deputies having more work to do. I would like to see the time come when the deputy or the fireman was absolutely independent of both sides, and when the men would be able to carry out their duties without the slightest risk of victimisation. In using the word "victimisation," I know what I am speaking about from the fireman's point of view. These men ought to have the fullest opportunity to carry out their work, and no man ought to be penalised for carrying out the Coal Mines (Regulation) Act. In regard to the method of inspection mentioned by one hon. Member on these benches, the workmen's inspection, I believe that something could be done in that direction. In 1872, when Parliament gave to mine workers the right to make inspections at their own cost, they limited the inspections to men employed in the particular mine. In 1887 and again in 1911 Parliament widened that provision and made it possible for mine workers to appoint any two persons who had practical knowledge, providing that they were not mining engineers. Section 16 of the Coal Mines (Regulation) Act has been productive of a great deal of good, but to-day that Section is nearly a dead letter, due to no other cause than that the miners are too poor to be able to pay their own inspectors. I suggest that where it is not possible to provide finance to enable workmen to appoint inspectors to do their work thoroughly, it might be possible to modify Section 16 by permitting the appointment of one inspector instead of two. If the workmen had the right to appoint inspectors in that way and the men were able to do their work thoroughly there would be fewer accidents in coal mines.
The House will, I am sure, pass the Motion. Anyone who knows anything about mining always deplores the loss of life and the injury to limb, but when we come to apply the remedies and to consider what is the best thing to do we usually differ. If there is one thing upon which we all ought to co-operate it is the promotion of safety. Every man and boy who goes into the bowels of the earth to work ought to have the satisfaction of knowing that all that scientific research can do is in operation to make life and limb more safe. The question of machines for coal getting has been mentioned, and electricity was also referred to. It would be advisable if on machine faces, where compressed air or electricity is used, there could be a more general use of automatic gas detectors. The object of the Motion is to lessen the number of accidents; therefore we ought to be prepared to put into operation anything that will reduce the accident rate. Where machines are being used for coal getting there is always a greater tendency towards an outbreak of fire-damp, and therefore I suggest the more extensive use of approved automatic gas detectors. I thank the House for their patient hearing. This may not be the last time that I shall have the opportunity of speaking on mining matters. I sincerely hope that the Motion will be carried and that action will be taken that will make the mines safer places in the future they are to-day.

Commodore DOUGLAS KING: In intervening for a few moments in the Debate I should like first of all to congratulate the hon. Member who has succeeded me in the office of Secretary for Mines on the tone of the Debate. I did not hear the Mover and Seconder of the Motion, but the Debate so far as I have heard it has been very excellent in tone. My recollection of similar Debates during the past 18 months is that a certain amount of heat was engendered, but although that was the case I always asked for the cooperation of hon. Members who were then in opposition on all questions of health and safety. Many of them are practical miners and know the ins and outs of the underground workings of a coal mine. I always asked for their co-operation; and I must always say that on questions of safety and health it was
most freely offered to me. I daresay I shall have to disagree with the Secretary for Mines very strongly on matters of policy, but not on matters of safety and health, because everyone who realises the dangers which miners have to face will be glad to co-operate in preventing, as far as it is possible, the dangers and accidents in mines.
I was interested in the remarks of the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. T. Smith), because he was following a line which I considered very carefully when I was Secretary for Mines. A considerable amount of money has been spent on research. The Miners' Welfare Fund Committee provide a certain amount of money each year for the purposes of research, and the general trend of research has been in regard to explosions and fires below ground, certainly a great danger which has to be faced by the working miner. I was glad, however, that the Miners' Welfare Fund Committee decided early in the year that part of the money now devoted to that research should be diverted and set aside for the purpose of research into the dangers arising from falls of ground and haulage accidents, to which no doubt a large proportion of the fatal and nonfatal accidents in mines are due. They are the most fruitful causes of accidents, and I welcome the change that has been made by the Miners' Welfare Committee in devoting a portion of the money to this side of research work. It is true that His Majesty's inspectors and the staff of the mines go most carefully into the cause of an accident, but if you have a sum of money set aside for research into the cause of these accidents they can be examined more thoroughly, and I feel sure that in this way we shall be able in time to reduce the heavy death rate which is due to these two causes.
The hon. Member mentioned steel arches and better roadways in mines. I had the opportunity when I was head of the Department of going underground in various mines—certainly under different conditions. It ia perfectly obvious that a good road is the best means of preventing haulage accidents. I have been down mines where one has had to go for half a mile or a mile on a narrow roadway about 3 feet high,
full of holes, and with 6 or 8 inches of water. It is obvious that accidents are far more liable under such conditions than in other mines, such as the mine of one company which I went down where they had steel arching for miles capable of carrying two sets of lines, good roadways, well lit and along which one could walk almost as well as along the streets of London. It is obvious that such improved conditions are bound to lessen dangers and the number of accidents from haulage and road causes, and I hope that this side of the problem will be considerably developed by the research which will be undertaken by the Miners' Welfare Fund Committee.
I was glad to hear several hon. Members mention the work done by His Majesty's inspectors. Everybody connected with the mining industry, not least the miners themselves, realise the great work which His Majesty's inspectors do for them in regard to safety and health. I had opportunities of seeing the work they do, and I was very impressed by the conscientious way in which they carry out their duties. I know that in the case of accidents they make their investigations very thoroughly, and every miner knows that almost the first person on the scene is His Majesty's inspector for the district. They go there not only for the purpose of seeing how the accident occurred, but how life can be saved if it is in danger, and sometimes they do so at the risk of their own lives. In recent months several inspectors of mines have actually lost their lives in trying to rescue miners who were in danger. I think that they are deserving of all the honour paid them in this House or outside. During one of the Debates last year I raised a point, which has not been raised to-day but which I will mention again even at the risk of getting the reception which my remarks received last year. I refer to the Safety First propaganda. I remarked some 12 months ago how concerned I was in reading the reports of a number of accidents which might have been avoided if the miners themselves had shown more care and acted on safety first principles.

Mr. KIRKWOOD: They would be starved to death if they did that.

Commodore KING: I think the hon. Member will agree with me that I am
dealing with it in a perfectly fair way and am only speaking in the interests of the miners themselves. Throughout London and in the large cities in the country there is a Safety First movement, under which the ordinary person in the street exercises his own judgment and keeps his wits about him in order to help himself from the dangers of the traffic. I am only urging this in the interests of the miners themselves. It has been supported by many members of the Labour party and is being pressed throughout the mines only in the interests of the miners themselves. The Safety First propaganda in London is not for the special benefit of the inhabitant, but for the benefit of the community as a whole; that they should try to do what they can to save themselves from danger. I think a great deal can be done if the Safety First movement is brought home to the miner.
I know miners well, not only from my eighteen months association with the Department. I knew them in the greatest test of courage during the War, and I look upon them as the most courageous body of men I have ever met. That is one of the chief dangers; they are almost contemptuous of danger. They are working under dangerous conditions the whole time, and a man who is working face to face with death, as the miner, gets contemptuous of danger and does not exercise that ordinary and proper care which another person might exercise. I will not stress the point but I feel sure that the Secretary of Mines will certainly support me in the remarks I have made, that a great many accidents might be avoided if we could get the miners themselves to exercise due care in carrying on their work. In many cases it is excessive zeal; they will take unnecessary risks in order to get the work going without any delay. It is not a question of blaming them; and I am not disparaging them at all. I am saying this in the interests of the miners and in the hope that those interested in the mining industry may still further impress upon them the need for helping themselves to avoid accidents. I have no criticisms to make on my successor at the Department and I assure him that as regards safety and health in mines he can rely upon me to give him any support he needs. I hope his efforts will meet with great success.

Mr. WILFRID WHITELEY: Like most other hon. Members who have preceded me in this House, over a long number of years, I have spent a good deal of time wondering what ultimately would be the subject upon which my first effort would be made, and I shall feel happy to the end of my days in knowing that my entry has been made on a subject of great human importance and that the few words I may be able to contribute to the Debate have been offered in the direction of saving life. I do not rise because I know anything technical regarding the mining industry. I do not rise even because I have miners in my own constituency; but no particular question will foe settled, either in the mining industry or the textile industry or any other industry, if we only hear the views of those who are interested in the particular industry concerned. It is exceedingly good for the miners to-day to hear the views of ordinary working folk in other trades, saying that we feel as they feel about it and that we want every possible ounce of energy that can be given towards making good this ever continuous inroad into the lives of those who are working in the bowels of the earth for our benefit.
As an ordinary coal user I have been perturbed almost from my earliest thinking days by the tremendous industrial handicap under which miners have to labour; they have this added difficulty, the tremendous risk so far as life and limb are concerned. I do not want to be flamboyant about it at all. I merely want to squeeze what I feel into one short sentence. As a coal user I want to feel at the earliest possible moment that there is no blood on the coal. I want to feel that every possible thing which can be done has been done to minimise the great toll of life represented by the figures given to us this afternoon. As a layman I was rather interested in piecing together from the statements which have been made those improvements which have taken place in particular directions in various parts of the country. For instance, we were told by the Mover of this Motion that one colliery management stopped haulage in order to give time for the workmen to get to the foot of the shaft and had thus minimised the risk of accident. We were told that in another case the introduction of a non-corrosive type of winding rope had mini-
mised accidents. The Seconder of the Motion informed us of a pit where the experiment of day wages had been made and there again we were told a tremendous difference in the number of accidents had resulted over a particular period of weeks or months.
I suggest that if the best that is now in operation in some pits and in relation to some points, could be put into operation in all pits and in relation to all points—by compulsion if necessary—there would be some probability of arriving at the stage of greatly reducing the accident figures which are before us to-day. I have not the slightest desire to enter into phases of discussion which are closed on this occasion or into which I ought not to enter, but I cannot help feeling that the present ownership arrangements in the mining industry are not the best, to say the least of it, for securing those conditions in regard to the lives of the workers which I am certain we are all desirous of securing. While not taking the opportunity of my maiden contribution to these Debates to tilt at private ownership, I desire nevertheless to say that in any particular industry or service—and personally I like to think of coal mining as a service rather than an industry—where the element of private gain has to enter so largely as it does under the present system, concern for the lives and well-being of the workers obviously cannot be the first consideration. I am anxious and I am sure all those in favour of the Motion are equally anxious to ensure by some means that the well-being of the workers shall actually be the first consideration in this case as in any other case, which we may have under review.
I thank the Mover of this Motion for putting it on the Order Paper, because by so doing he inveigled me into spending a week-end in much closer contact with the mining industry than I would perhaps have been able to achieve otherwise. I had with me two reports which probably have come into the hands of other Members during the last few weeks. These reports impressed me particularly because they refer to the Midlands area with which I have a close connection. One is the report concerning the accident at the Maryhill Colliery, Kidsgrove, North Staffordshire, on 17th January, 1929, and the other is the report on the fire at the
Coombs Wood Colliery, Worcestershire, in March last. I was perturbed as an ordinary layman, as an ordinary worker if you like, by looking into the conditions under which these miners were working and were losing their lives. In the case of the Maryhill Colliery three men lost their lives because of an inrush of water from some old pit workings, and I discover in the report of the deputy chief inspector of mines the following paragraph which is to me, alarming:
Although the actual cause of the accident is likely to remain unexplained several facts regarding plans of abandoned mines emerged upon which recommendations with a view to avoiding a similar accident in future can be made.
That would not have been too bad if it had not been followed up by the statement that, although information as to old pit workings ought to be recorded under the Coal Mines Act, 1911, yet in this case
this information was so vague as to have little or no value from the safety point of view.
In that case, as well as in the other to which I propose to refer, I feel that as the coal mining industry has been carried on for a very long time there must have been innumerable accidents regarding which the same report had to be made, and in regard to which it might be said that if only something had been commenced earlier, if only something had been done sooner, in all probability lives would have been saved. There must be a tremendous feeling of agony to the relatives of the victims of mine accidents in the thought of that ever present "if." If something had been done perhaps these bread-winners would not have been taken. The Coombs Wood accident was a case of fire. It was caused by a damp sheet taking fire and the result in a very short time was a total of eight deaths. In the evidence at the inquiry and in the report, questions were raised as to the quality of the damp sheet which was the part cause of the accident. According to the deputy chief inspector of mines I learn that:
many of the witnesses at the inquiry who were questioned on the matter, agreed that non-inflammable cloth was desirable, but all seemed to be doubtful whether any really satisfactory non-inflammable brattice cloth could be obtained. I would suggest therefore that there is room for investigation and research in this direction.
I desire respectfully to submit that if, in some circumstances it had been necessary to discover a non-inflammable cloth for war purposes during the War years, such a cloth would have been discovered and probably if we, as a community, really took to heart the seriousness of this question of the death roll among miners, it would not be found beyond the capacity of science to discover a non-inflammable material for use in such circumstances. But the most disheartening and alarming portion of this second report is the following paragraph:
Although as I have said above the accident was due directly to the use of naked lights, and inflammable brattice cloth, in my opinion, there would have been no loss of life but for the unfortunate position in which the damp sheet in the Manor Road was hung.
It seems to me lamentable that in a report dealing with an accident in which eight lives were lost, a record should have to be made that the position of a particular thing in that particular mine was responsible for those deaths. It seems to me that the mining industry has been going on long enough to enable sufficient consideration to have been given to organisation, or at least possibilities of organisation in this respect, and for the discovery of the best place in which to hang a damp sheet in a mine. Surely the loss of eight lives was not necessary in order to discover all the circumstances of the case. I cannot enter into technicalities because I do not know them, but I, at least, have tremendous joy in being able on this occasion to raise my voice on this question of the safety of my fellow workers in the mines.

6.0 p.m.

Miss LEE: An hour ago I would have been very surprised if told that I would now be addressing the House but in my judgment some essential facts have been omitted in this Debate and I rise to draw attention to those points. I am not going to harrow the feelings of the House by stressing the human side of the accidents in the pits. We know them. No one has attempted to deny the fact that the rate of accidents is not decreasing, but I was very surprised at the speech made by the late Secretary for Mines during the more positive and constructive side of this Debate, when he said, "What is there that we, as a House of Commons, can do to lessen the acci-
dents in the mines?" Then I took note of the main points in his speech. He made reference to the increase of research work being made by the miners' welfare people. It is most admirable, and we all support their efforts. He also made reference to the work of His Majesty's Inspectors of Mines. We all agree that they are doing their work very admirably, but I would like to call his attention to the fact that His Majesty's Inspector is only a rare and passing visitor to the mines, that he usually arrives in a motor car, is introduced to the main officials in the colliery office at the surface, and that a 'phone message telling of his arrival can be sent from the surface down to the workings underground. Although I am not a safety man myself, I have lived for 25 years with a safety man, so I think I may claim to know a little of how these things work. Therefore, with the best intentions in the world, I think there can be no doubt at all that the stage is rather set in many particulars before His Majesty's Inspector of Mines actually reaches the mine face where the men are working.
But we must not forget that the main burden of inspection does not lie on this occasional visitor, but that it lies on the deputy in the pit, and I believe that if this House is serious in the, sympathy it has expressed with the miners, it must give careful attention to the position of the deputy in the mine. I believe that from this point all our thought and all our plans ought to start. Up to the present moment the deputies in the mines are under-officials, below the managers, and below the under-managers, paid by the company, controlled by the company, and used by the company very often not simply to carry out their work as safety men, but to speed up output and to do all sorts of jobs that do not fall within their specific purpose. No person with any knowledge of the mines will deny the fact that the present position in the coalfields is such that if a deputy refuses to carry on those extra duties, if he is not in many instances a good slave-driver, helping to get the maximum of output, that deputy is dismissed, or at least he is dismissed from his particular job. So let us turn our attention to the problem of how we can ensure that the deputy is really doing his job, and that he is doing it without any fear of in-
curring the displeasure of the manager by sending in some report which shows that something is wrong underground. The remedy is very simple. It is to realise that it would be very much better to have the deputy paid at the post office instead of at the pit-head, or at least to have the deputy definitely paid directly by the State, and responsible to the State, in the same way as His Majesty's Inspectors of Mines are responsible. Then we could at least be sure that these men who are entrusted with the duty of looking after safety in the pits were giving their whole attention and their skill disinterestedly, without favour or fear of victimisation.
That is one thing I would like to bring to the notice of the late Secretary for Mines. He must forgive me if I go on to say something about his remarks on safety first in the mines. I agree with him that accidents in the mines are sometimes caused by the negligence of the miners themselves. I have discussed this problem many a time with miners, and they have not attempted to deny it. I have discussed it many a time with deputies, who go round the pits seeking to maintain the working places in safety, and one and all of them have said to me that their chief difficulty is to get the miners themselves to stop working and to take time to ensure that the pit props are put up correctly, that there is no damp accumulating, and that generally the position is safe. The late Secretary for Mines referred to the heroism of the miners. I think, with all due deference, I can say that that is a cowardly way of getting out of the problem, because if the late Secretary for Mines had as intimate a knowledge as I believe he has sincerity in his outlook on this question, he would know that it is no foolhardy, misplaced heroism that makes miners lose their lives. It is simply that the day is working on, that they want to get the maximum amount of money to take home, that they know that even when they are working their absolute limit they are still going to have an inadequate amount. Therefore, when an inspector comes along and says, "You must stop attending to output and attend to your props, and to the conditions in which you are working," the miner turns on the deputy with a curse at times, because he is thinking, not only of his own immediate bodily
safety, but of the safety of his home, the health of his home, the wellbeing of his home, that cannot be maintained unless he is taking home an adequate amount at the end of the week.
Therefore, in one respect it is heroism that makes the miner often neglect safety, but it is not heroism in the sense that the hon. and gallant Member opposite meant it, but that rather, in spite of all the difficulties put in his way by the late Conservative Government, the miner is still trying to carry on the impossible task of earning an income that can keep his home going. There is no use in debating a subject like this unless we have some practical solution to offer, and I have a practical remedy for this, as I have already indicated. It is simply to remove some of the economic pressure from the shoulders of the miners, to remove this fear of want, and then the miners will have time to attend to matters of safety; and if, in addition to getting better wages in the pit, we can at a very early date reduce the length of the working day in the pit, we shall be making a very real and great contribution to safety in the pit, and not be merely expressing good intentions that we do not intend to honour. I was very interested in the references to nystagmus. I come up against many such cases, and I can only say that in reference to that disease and many others I hope the outcome of this Debate will be to focus our attention on the need for the whole of our compensation machinery with regard to accidents in mines being overhauled.
There is one other point I want to stress. The House will hear me on this particular point again, so I hope that I may to-day simply arouse preliminary interest, and I already have the assurance of the sympathy of the House in all parts. This suggestion is that pit-head baths, instead of being the exception in the collieries, ought to be legally compulsory at very pit-head. I have visited some splendid pit-head baths and have found there not only provision for the men cleaning themselves and drying their clothes, but first-rate ambulance rooms and first-aid rooms. I want this House to remember that when accidents do occur—and in spite of all our best endeavours there will be accidents in the future as in the past, unfortunately—very often the collier is carried home to a single end or to a butt and ben, carried home very
often to a house without water or proper sanitation. The woman of the house is so upset that she can do nothing. The neighbours have to run and boil water, they have to run and get old sheets or towels, or something to clean and bandage the workman. Sometimes, I admit, he is taken straight to hospital, but sometimes he is not, and the conditions in miners' homes, apart altogether from the stress of the woman's anxieties, are not such that men ought to be taken home for first aid. I hope that this House will make the outcome of to-day's Debate a determination to show that we are in earnest in our speeches, that we do not merely want to get cheap credit for being people with nice natures, but that we will accept the five main points I have put forward in my remarks.
I want independent deputies; I want those men paid at the post office, instead of at the pit heads; I want better wages and shorter working hours for the men, which will remove the most acute economic pressure and also remove some of the fatigue of the last hour of the working day, when the maximum amount of accidents occur; I want the compensation machinery overhauled; and I want pithead baths at every colliery. I ask all hon. Members in this Chamber to take the earliest opportunity to make these things not merely vague good intentions, but the law of the land. Then the shadow of the coalfields will not fall so heavily over places such as this, and the conscience of the nation will at least to some extent be satisfied that it is making an honest endeavour to do its duty to what the late Secretary for Mines has described as the bravest body of men in the country.

The SECRETARY for MINES (Mr. Ben Turner): All who have listened to this Debate will be convinced of the seriousness of the subject, and it is very evident that it is a non-party question in every sense of the word. I thank my predecessor in office for the very kindly words he used in connection with the work of the Mines Department. It is very desirable that it should be free from any party bias, because life is too sacred to be the plaything of any party. I have lived most of my lifetime in a semi-mining district and in a mining country. Many of my neighbours have been men who have borne the black marks
and bruises of the miner's life. I have seen men brought home with broken backs, and I have known men cut to bits by the coal-cutting machine. I have seen scores of miners being brought from a pit after an explosion. Therefore, I may speak with more feeling than is perhaps expected to be aroused in a Secretary for Mines. I, of course, have my feelings aroused every Monday morning, because, as my predecessor knows, a return is given to me of the number of deaths and accidents in the pits, and it really is a heartbreaking record that is presented each week at the Mines Department when you read, as I read every Monday, about 20 miners being killed—that is, outside quarries—and about 100 persons being seriously injured.
When we read in the newspapers about a man being killed at this pit or that, it does not seem to affect us unless we know the person. When we read of a man being hurt at this pit or that and taken to the hospital, it passes us by unless again we know him. But when it comes to an explosion or a big accident, the sympathy of the whole people is aroused, although it may not affect as many persons as the weekly total as presented to my Department. We want the same sympathy to be aroused for all those persons who are killed or injured as is aroused by an explosion which takes perhaps a score or more persons away. The recorded accidents in 1928 were less than in the years before, but I have no such comfort to offer for this year. Up to this year, the numbers were the lowest since 1899, but during the first nine months of this year we have gone back to the old mark of over 1,000 persons killed a year. Then it is certain that there are many unrecorded accidents. All of us know that many accidents do not come into the list of recorded accidents; because of stress of family circumstances, belief in home remedies, and many other causes, a man does not have every blow which he receives in the pit recorded, and many of them are overlooked for the sake of the man's bread and butter.
It is said, and it is true, that the death-rate in our pits is less than in America or in Germany. That may be statistical comfort, but it is no comfort for those who lose their breadwinner, and from that point of view all parties
in the State are anxious, if possible, to assist in the reduction of these accidents. I wonder sometimes if the unsettled economic and other conditions in the coalfields have added to the heavy loss of life and limb. I am quite certain that there has been no slackness in the Mines Department in connection with protection, well-being and safety in the mines. But the rate is so terrible that we cannot afford to be complacent about it, and every effort must be made to bring about a great reduction.
With regard to inspection, the duties of inspectoral are to enquire into all accidents, to make investigations about fatal and non-fatal accidents, and to try and find out the causes of accidents. Perhaps their most important work—which is quite a proper work—is in advising and discussing safe practices with the object of securing the best safety methods. Although I have had only five months experience, I am certain that the impartial and independent position of the inspectors and their highly technical training has been of great service to the mining population and to the industry.
The present strength of the inspectorate is 106, including eight special inspectors who devote the whole of their time to the inspection of pit ponies. In 1924, my predecessor enlarged the number of divisions from six to eight, and 12 new inspectors were appointed. This was done because of the question which we are discussing now. The number of mines in 1922 was 2,911, and the employés 1,162,754. Last year the number of mines was 2,539, and the number of employés 951,000. Therefore, there has been a considerable reduction in mines and in persons employed in mines, but the inspection of mines has increased. In 1922 the number of inspections was 18,941; last year it was 21,748. Every coal mine which was working last year was inspected at least once, and many were inspected more than once, while several mines were inspected throughout every part. A full inspection of a mine takes a considerable time. My predecessor and I have been joy-riding in coal pits in our terms of office; of course, there is no joy riding in pits, for it is all hard, dark, dangerous, dismal, dull work and an inspector going through a pit to examine it com-
pletely must take a very considerable time. The average number of inspections of every mine per year was 7.2 underground and 1.5 on the surface.
Some people might say that the inspectors themselves have certain views, and that in addition to that there are not enough of them. I am certain that the new electrical development in mines calls for more skilled electrical inspectors. The inspectors have some knowledge of electrical work, but they are not specialised, and the specialist staff needs enlargement. In 1908, when the use of this new agency was brought into mines, the Department appointed a highly qualified specialist in this section, but since 1912, when 500,000 horse power was being applied to pits, the amount has grown until it is now 1,750,000 horse power. There is great risk in the use of this new agency and it requires attention. The chief cause of accidents from the use of electricity and of much inefficiency in the use of electrical power below ground, is that the standard of maintenance of the apparatus is not sufficiently high. This arises from several causes, including a lack of knowledge. It is my pleasure to say that to relieve the situation I am going to appoint additional electrical inspectors of mines, whose duties will largely be those of actual inspection below ground, as it is believed that such inspections, in addition to their value as a check against misadventure, would have a considerable value in education among managements and electricians, and in time do a great deal to reassure the miners.

Commodore KING: How many is the hon. Gentleman going to appoint?

Mr. TURNER: I hope four, including one at the head office.

Mr. BATEY: What is the use of four?

Mr. TURNER: Four is four times more than one, and it is a good addition for the present. A point was raised by some of my friends with regard to the 1911 Act. There are 100 pages of general regulations, and 127 sections of the Act, and the question has arisen many times whether there should not be a revision of the Act. There have been, and are now, a considerable number of committees under the Goal Mines Act who are reporting on the amendments and extensions which are desirable, and I do not
think that it would be possible for a single committee to examine all the sections covered by the 1911 Act and the regulations. It has been sectionalised into certain specialist committees on which some hon. Members of this House are members. One committee is dealing with qualifications of colliery officials, another is dealing with lamps, and another is dealing with plans. The hon. Gentleman who spoke on the question of keeping plans of abandoned mines can be assured that every day that matter is receiving attention from the departmental officials. Anyone who cares to go into the cellar of the Mines Department will see a tremendous number of these plans, and they are kept as far as possible up-to-date. You cannot, however, go back to the days of Adam for every plan, and we are doing our best to bring them up to the mark. Another question was raised by an hon. Member about wire ropes. That is a very good suggestion, but again we have a committee specially dealing with it as a question which requires all possible care.
The difficulties of revising legislation are twofold. In the first place the various sections of the industry are all too pre-occupied with labour and economic conditions to give it the detailed attention and constructive criticism which the Department needs. In the second, the Government are so fully occupied with prospective legislation in this and other matters, that the delay, although it may be condemned, is after all impossible at present to overcome. In connection with the code of regulations for first aid and ambulance work, I have a notion that the question has been held up, not by the Mines Department, but by a procedure which seems to be not as speedy as it should be. In the regulations which we have been trying to get for ambulance work and first aid, the practice has been to send the draft regulations to the Mining Association; then it comes back from the Association to the Department and then it is sent to the Miners' Federation. This policy has meant inordinate delay and I do not see any earthly reason why we should not short circuit it, and why the two sides of the industry should not meet together and argue out the best regulations, instead of passing the draft backwards and forwards and losing many months of time. I know that many owners and men have been worried with
economic and other difficulties, but, it may be asked, why should the Department wait for one side or the other. I think the best plan is to try to arrive at general agreement rather than impose regulations. I would rather wait a little longer, though with much regret, than thrust regulations down the throats of the men and the owners.
Many accidents could be avoided with more care and expenditure, care on the part of the management, the officials and the men, and expenditure on the part of the owners. In the reports presented to me weekly I find that here and there blame is cast upon workmen or deputies. In some of the cases the men who can tell the truth are dead, and the real story cannot be learned by any process of scientific deduction. I do not like to find always that the dead workman has the blame for his death cast upon him, but that should not, of course, blind us to the fact that owing to workmen being inured to accidents, acclimatised to them, the care which ought to be displayed is not always used. There is also another point, which was referred to by an hon. Lady, namely, that the management have a costly infatuation for the god of output, which is responsible for many accidents in our mines. There has been a complaint, which I have heard for the past 45 years, that when His Majesty's inspectors visit a mine or a factory the management know about it, and inspectors are suspected of having informed pits beforehand of their coming visit. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I do not believe it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I do not believe it.

Mr. JOHN: But we know it.

Mr. TURNER: It is the easiest thing in the world, either in a pit or in a factory, for news of an inspector's visit to get round. Within two minutes of the inspector entering the mill yard or the pit yard the news is switched round. But the inspectors do not notify the management when they are going to visit the pit, unless there has been some previous incident there which causes them to have to notify the inspector.

Miss LEE: The statement was that, although the management did not know the inspector was coming, there are telephones at the pithead, and that before the inspector was out of the office the
news was right round the whole of the underground workings, and there was ample time to get things put right.

Mr. TURNER: I know that many a time the inspector must go to the office to look at the books and to check records, but I have a great faith in the integrity of our inspectors and of our Civil Service in general, and I have a bigger faith in the independence of our workpeople, who dare speak to an inspector, who dare talk back to a manager and show some independence. If we take the view that the workers in the pits and the mills are craven spirits, we are not doing justice to our own people, and I have too great faith in their character to support that suggestion.

Mr. J. LEES: On a point of Order. If the miners dare to speak—

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not rising to a point of Order.

Mr. LEES: It is a point of correction.

Mr. TURNER: Undoubtedly, there are in mines as in mills undermen who are little overmen, who will do mean things, but I think the Paul Prys and the Uriah Heeps are fading away. I hope a workman will not be afraid to write to the Inspector or the Department. The names of such workmen will not be divulged. I would prefer, however, that they should send their complaints through their trade unions, because that would be more orderly, and probably the complaints would be better checked and be more substantial. But our inspectors do not go about seeking whom to prosecute. Their object is to prevent accidents, and to frame the best and safest methods. Accidents which may be loosely termed non-preventible may continue, however, longer than many of us can look forward to. Accidents arising from falls of roof and from haulage are the heaviest in each week's return, and this has caused the Department, through the Mines Research Board, to decide to appoint a highly qualified specialist to organise and superintend further experimental work on these subjects, and, generally, to assist the Safety in Mines Research Board in regard to these important mechanical problems in coal mines.
I think my predecessor raised a question as regards propaganda. The De-
partment is certainly doing very much propaganda work, and I hope my hon. Friends and the miners will take advantage of the red books which are now being issued to promote safety, because it cannot interfere with the independence of a man to receive guidance as to how to conduct himself in his mining work.

Mr. WALLHEAD: I asked the hon. Member a day or two ago what action he had taken with regard to riders in pits, and he told me that if I would give him information he would cause inquiry to be made. May I say, as bearing upon the question which he has just raised, that I cannot tell him where the pit is. The information I received was anonymous, and it was anonymous because the man who wrote it dare not allow his name to be known on account of the terrorism that exists in the pits; but I am assured by men that there are cases where miners are compelled to ride on tubs travelling at 12 miles an hour, whereas the law says the speed is not to be more than three.

Mr. TURNER: One of the illnesses that affect the coalfield is that known as nystagmus.

Mr. MacLAREN: Does that affect the Department as well?

Mr. TURNER: This is too serious a subject for a comic artist. I have seen a large number of cases in my own area. Lamp makers have been trying for a long time to get the right kind of light for both safety and eyesight. There are many electrical devices both for roadways and for the use of the miner. It is a subject for the experts, and in recent months I have seen many sorts of lamps in British collieries as well as at our testing station at Sheffield. I was told by a firm on Saturday night that they have found the ideal lamp, and other firms are making similar claims, and I hope that science will succeed in helping to produce a lamp giving a safe light with a bigger candle power, which will preserve the miner's eyesight and help to make his production better.
The question of steel props and steel girders has been raised to-night, and the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. T. Smith) dealt with that fairly fully. It is said in connection with this matter that owing to the high cost of steel props
they must be recovered and used over again, and in some cases that makes their use too costly. Further, in the mining world itself, both among coal managers and coal-miners, there is a very stout objection to steel props. Science must tell us what is to be done and whether steel props or steel girders are the better. I can visualise steel girders being used in a coal pit which I went down the other day. I walked for a distance of 1,380 yards along a road where it was fairly easy to go; it was better walking there than crossing Parliament Square. But I can also imagine other pits where there are not such good roads, where the way is narrower, and where it will be much more difficult to introduce steel girders. It may be possible to use them in one place and not in the other. The inspectors of the Department are looking into this matter very fully. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. Wallhead) raised the question about wheelless tubs. Am I right in talking about wheelless tubs?

Mr. WALLHEAD: No, it was the riders of whom I spoke.

Mr. TURNER: Since the accident in Somerset there has been a general improvement in certain collieries in Somerset, and prohibitions as regards the "guss" have been put into operation. A Departmental Committee in 1927–28 inquired into this matter. Here again I have to be guided by experts. Then there is the question of the pit cage gates in Somerset mines. An inquiry has been made into that question. The inspectors of mines are doing their best to see that the locking device for the cage gates is made as secure as possible. I have seen a dozen interlocking or locking devices which do not seem to me as a layman to be as protective as they ought to be, but the Department is doing its best in this matter. I have been told in the course of this Debate that work people have not the same right of prosecution—they never had—as owners, managers and inspectors. I am advised by the legal department that this view is based on a misunderstanding of the law. The worker or any other person has the right to prosecute a colliery owner, manager or official for any offence against the Coal Mines Act or Regulations committed by the person who is
charged. That is legal advice and there is no limitation there. [Interruption.] I am giving the advice of those above me, and therefore I am quite certain in saying that there is a right to prosecute a person who commits an offence.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Will the hon. Gentleman say under what section of the Act?

Mr. TURNER: Section 102 paragraph 5.

Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN: Is an aggrieved person in a position to prosecute the deputy or the official or the colliery company as such?

Mr. TURNER: The prosecution has to be against the owner, the manager or under-manager of a mine. That is the legal wording of the Clause. There have been many attempts to deal with mechanical devices and the use of certain things has been made compulsory, including detaching hooks, overspeed preventers, and drags and stop blocks on inclines; and the Mines Department does its best to add to the list of these things.
In conclusion I would like to say that all the questions which have been put to me shall have careful examination so as to see how best to promote safety and comfort in the pits. No one can deny that we lose too many of our best folks in the mines, and far too many are lamed and injured. Miners are a brave body of people, and they never fail the test in times of disaster. I am thankful that they get us our coal. In my prayers each night I pray for their safety and well being, their happiness, and their comfort, for they add to our happiness and comfort by their labours. For one third of their lives they are hid away from sunshine and free air, amidst danger and dirt, and often ruled by economic considerations and circumstances. I do not want to injure the trade, the owners, the managements or the officials, but I do want those who face the greatest danger to have the utmost protection.
I sometimes wonder if it is possible for owners and men to work more in consultation with each other. I sometimes wonder why the owners and men's associations do not meet together more frequently to consider what are the best safety plans, what is the best way to economic restoration, and what is the wisest way to win that co-operation in
all things that may be good for the industry. Joint industrial councils in other industries in these days of attempts of mutuality meet together free from past tradition and trammels and hammer out problems of well being and safety, work out plans for production and progress, and I would suggest to the two sides in the coal industry that they should use all their co-operative good will to arrive at the changes that will make coal mines more safe from accidents than they are to-day.

Miss LEE: Will the Secretary for Mines reply to my suggestion about the deputies?

Mr. TURNER: That question is having careful attention.

Mr. DAGGAR: This subject has been dealt with by previous speakers very fully, and I approach it with the greatest diffidence. I hope I shall not transgress the Rules and Regulations of the House, but, if I do so, I shall greatly appreciate being corrected. I have had 25 years' experience as a miner, and, in addition to that, I represent a mining constituency in this House. I have noticed since I have been a Member of this House that when certain observations are made by new Members from these benches the retort is sometimes made, "They emanate from a new Member." I would remind hon. Members opposite that we claim to be familiar with many of the subjects which are discussed in this House, and we are very much concerned about the enormous loss of life which takes place every year in the mines of this country. According to the statistics of the Mines Department, the number of young persons under 16 years of age who met with accidents in mines in 1927 in South Wales was 1,392. In the year 1928 the number was 1,287. For the whole of Great Britain the number of young men under 16 years of age who were injured in 1927 was 7,635 and in the year 1928 7,216. The number of young persons, 16 years of age and under 18 years of age, who met with accidents in South Wales was 2,211 in 1927 and 2,254 in 1928.
When we come to examine the number of persons of that age employed in pits we find that in the year 1927 there were over 11,000 young men
rendered idle as a result of accidents in mines. In 1928, which is the last year for which the statistics are available, over 10,464 persons were injured in the mines, and in my opinion that is a terrible price to pay for the production of coal. In discussing this problem regard must be paid to the fact that the method of producing coal in the mines of this country has been completely revolutionised during the last 10 years. We have had and we are still having an increasingly large amount of machinery introduced in the mines, including coal-cutting machines.
While it is true that explosions in coal mines are not as frequent as they have been in the past, those of us who live near the place where the last explosion occurred have been daily reminded of that catastrophe, and as a result of our inquiries we contend that stowing should be made compulsory in every mine in Great Britain. At the present time the management of the mines are under no legal obligation to fill up disused roads. In my opinion those roads constitute a potential reservoir for gas and no one can deny that at any moment there is a possibility that the gas will leak out. May I also call attention to the subsidences which are constantly taking place in mining villages and which destroy the homes of the miners?
I want to remind the House that the escape of gas in mines is no theory of mine. Before coming to this House as a miners' agent I have had to descend the pit at 2.30 in the morning on account of a constant outburst of gas. As a result of changes in the ventilation of the mines very often that gas has been removed, although nobody could say what was the actual cause of the escape of the gas. In many cases not even the colliery agent can account for the constant outbursts of gas which completely block the ventilation sometimes to the extent of 100 yards of the main roadway. The miners claim that the only effective safeguard is the absolute stowing of disused roads. While no hon. Members will be disposed to say that rather than have regard to the safety of the miners these roads should not be stowed we claim that the necessity for this being done is an important factor and these vacant spaces should be completely filled with rubbish. Hon. Members are well aware that instead of the
rubbish being retained in the pit it is taken out and thus constitutes a disgrace to many mining villages where you often find large heaps as high as mountains. We contend that the rubbish should be retained in the pits. It is sent to the surface in many instances because that course is cheaper and more economical.
7.0 p.m.
Coal-cutting machinery has already been referred to. May I point out that in many instances there are large conveyor faces extending as much as 180 yards? I contend that it is the duty of the Mines Department to see that large lengths of conveyor faces should not exist and that mineowners should insert an additional road in order to guarantee that the men's lives shall be protected when they are producing one of the most valuable commodities used in this country. Reference has been made to the introduction of steel supports, and there appears to be some confusion between the miners' officials and the mineowners in regard to steel props and steel arches. Without hesitation I assert that there is no opposition in a single pit in Great Britain to the erection of steel arches. They are used to maintain the roads, and steel supports are in actual daily use by men employed in the cutting of coal. Some persons have referred to the steel supports as being steel rails, and it is true to say that in our part of the mining area they are absolutely identical with the steel rails over which the ordinary locomotive travels. That is the steel support which is used in almost every colliery in one of the largest combines in South Wales. I agree with the speaker who suggested that, in view of there being some opposition to the introduction of the steel supports, there should be conferences held which could be attended by the men themselves, by mining managers, and, also, by representatives of the mines inspectorate. While I realise the importance of the attitude taken up by the mineowners in introducing these steel props, I am not convinced, as a practical miner, that they can be introduced regardless of the nature of the roof and of the bottom. There are some measures developed in South Wales where the steel prop will be an advantage, and there are other measures developed there where the steel prop would be a disadvantage to the men from a safety point of view.
I also hold the opinion that there should be an increase in the number of what we call workmen's inspectors. By that, I mean, persons entirely distinct from the workmen's examiners referred to in the Collieries Act, 1911. We also urge that the mines inspector, when called upon to examine a particular mine, should be placed under a legal obligation to submit his report to the men on whose behalf he has paid a visit to the particular mine. While it is not bearing directly on this point, we feel, too, that a man who is 60 years of age should be given a pension which would be an incentive to him to leave the mines and allow the younger men to undertake the arduous task of mining coal.
May I refer for a moment to the observations of the late Secretary for Mines? I am not disposed to question his sincerity, but I submit that there is no comparison between the principles of safety first in travelling in the streets of London and the principles of safety first in the mines of this country. There is, too, no comparison whatever between the eight-hours working day that existed in this country before we had the seven-hours day, and the eight-hours day that is now being worked. As a result of the introduction of the seven-hours working day, the process of producing coal was speeded up. Our men are still working at that speeded-up rate, although at the present moment they are compelled to work eight hours. The number of accidents cannot be reduced by the methods employed by the late Government, namely, an increase in the working day and a decrease in the wages paid. I come from a division where since 1920 no other question has agitated the minds of the coalowners than to decrease wages, notwithstanding the increase in the number of hours worked. One fact which can be borne out by statistics, namely, the large number of accidents that occur at the end of the shift, warrants us in assuming that the increase in accidents is largely due to the speeding-up process, consequent on the increased working day. The men are compelled to work hard and work longer hours in order to receive a wage that will permit them to make at least an attempt to live a decent life. The safety of our mines and a decrease in the number of accidents cannot be obtained by an increase in the number
of hours or by a decrease in the wages paid to our people.

Mr. CAPE: I would like, first of all, to compliment the hon. Member who has just sat down on the contribution he has made to the Debate this afternoon, and I feel sure I am echoing the sentiments of every Member of this House when I say that we hope to hear him many times in the days to come. I want to speak on this subject for a short time and not from the humanitarian point of view of the question. If I had to do that I could do it with as much effect as any Member of this House as it has been my unfortunate lot to have come in contact with probably more mines explosions than any Member of this House, not only in rescue work and investigations, but also in attending several inquiries on behalf of the Federation in other counties than my own. At present in my own coalfield there are 14 men lying behind a sealed stopping in Whitehaven as the result of a colliery explosion. I want to direct my remarks to the reply we have received from the Secretary for Mines. I heard it with somewhat mixed feelings. Some parts of his speech made me feel rather pleased; other parts were rather a disappointment. We have had an intimation to-night that he is about to appoint four additional inspectors for electrical purposes alone. That is a step in the right direction. He proves by the figures he quoted that electricity is one of the developing agencies so far as mining life is concerned. Up to the present it has not got the attention that it ought to have from the Department of Mines, and I was very glad to know that the Secretary for Mines was directing his energies in that way.
In regard to the statement that he made about inspectors of mines, I do not think anybody is going to question that they are impartial and independent. So far as the inspectors of mines with whom I have had to deal in my district are concerned, I have always found them ever ready to attend any pit or any mine when I have requested them to do so. The hon. Lady who represents North Lanark (Miss Lee) put a problem to the Secretary for Mines which is difficult to deal with. An inspector might come to
a mine without intimating to the colliery company that he was coming—and it is a difficult thing to convince the miner that he does not do so, though I assume that he does not—but generally and invariably when he arrives at the colliery, the first place he makes for is the colliery office. I wonder if he could not find out the colliery workmen's representative to find out certain things which it might be worth his while to inspect while he is there. It is possible that the colliery manager may telephone down the mine to the under officials to tell them that the inspector has come, and it is wonderful what a transformation can take place in a coal mine in a short time. How to stop that happening is a problem, but it is worth considering. When the mines inspector arrives at a mine, could it not be made one of the conditions that he should immediately get into touch with the workmen's representative and that the workmen's representative should have the right to accompany him in his inspection of the particular part of the mine he is going to inspect?
The Minister gave us the number of inspectors appointed and the number of inspections made, but, when you compare the number of inspections with the number of pits and remember the wide area that some of these pits cover in their underground workings, it will be seen that, notwithstanding the large number of inspectors appointed, they are still inadequate to meet the requirements of a full inspection of the mines of the country. The Minister talks about some of the pits not being inspected in a day. I was a workman's inspector for a while and could not inspect some of the pits in the Cumberland coalfield within three days. I do not know one inspector who put in a day's inspection. He makes a flying visit, puts in an hour or two below ground and the remainder of the time he spends in the office, looking at books and so on. The Secretary for Mines might direct his attention to increasing the number of inspectors appointed and also increasing them in the direction indicated by the last speaker, that is, by appointing what one would call workman's inspectors, inspectors who would be living in and about the mines in their particular locality and who could inspect the mines by themselves and accompany. His Majesty's Inspector of Mines when he visits the
mines. These are all points of vital importance to the mining community. I believe that the House is sincere in its sympathy and I endorse the request made by the hon. Lady to give practical effect to that sympathy. Let us, first, have some more workmens' representatives.
I was disappointed when the Secretary for Mines told us that nothing could be done so far as mining legislation was concerned for safety in mines. We are satisfied that the time is now overdue for an overhauling of the Mines (Regulations) Act. The regulations to-day do not meet the conditions of the mining world as we know it to-day. The Minister told us that there were committees sitting reporting on safeguards and a variety of other subjects. These committees have been sitting for a considerable time. Surely, a good many of them must have reported by now, and, in the case of those who have not reported, their reports ought to be speeded up.

Mr. TURNER: May I just say that many of them have reported partly, and their recommendations have been adopted by the inspectorate and by the Department?

Mr. CAPE: That helps me in my contention, because it shows that there is all the more need for the carrying out of my suggestion, and I think the Minister would be within his rights in setting up a Committee, not to investigate what these Committees have been investigating, but to consider ways and means for including desirable reforms in a Bill to be presented to Parliament. As to the other causes of delay, we are all cognisant of them, but, even so, I think it should be possible for the necessary Bill to be passed through this House.
Another point that the Minister made was that, when these regulations were about to be made, they were sent to the Mining Association and then back to the Department, and were then sent to the Miners' Federation and again back to the Department. I quite agree with that, because I have had something to do with some of these regulations when they have come to the Miners' Federation. The Minister made a very good suggestion, but I can assure him without hesitation that the Miners' Federation would not
decline to meet in joint conference the representatives of the coalowners with a view to framing these regulations. I want to say emphatically that any delay in that regard is on the other side. It seems strange to the Minister that we cannot get the same harmony and good will in the mining industry that exists in other industries as regards the holding of these joint conferences, but to-day we have had an example of what occurs. If I have read the evening Press aright, the Government have made an attempt to bring the two sides together on vital and important questions, but one of the sides has absolutely declined, as far as I am able to gather; and this is the very attitude that they take upon every other question connected with mining. So long as that spirit exists, there is no hope of harmony and good will in this vital industry. I entirely agree with the Secretary for Mines that it would be a good thing for everyone concerned in the mining industry if that good will could be brought about between the two sections.
With regard to another statement made by the Minister, as to men not daring to complain, I want to tell him, speaking for my own district alone, that I do not find many men in my district who are afraid to complain either to the manager or the inspector, or even to the owner. But there is this about it, that, owing to the economic conditions in the mines to-day, the man that dares to be a Daniel in these matters very often finds himself wending his way either to the Employment Exchange or to the Poor Law guardians. We want more freedom in regard to men being allowed to express themselves without this fear hanging over them. It may be said that their trade union can protect them, but, supposing that the trade union is bold enough to call a strike to protect these men, the whole population in the locality holds up its hands in holy horror at this attempt to force the manager to restart a man who has dared to complain.
I believe I am right in saying that a miner can write anonymously to the Inspector of Mines, and that, if the Inspector gets an anonymous letter, he must attend to it. But even if a man does that, or if he goes to his trade union, he has to give the Inspector an indication of where he should inspect,
and nine times out of 10 that enables the management to put their hands immediately on the man who has made the complaint. If a man is complaining about a certain area in a certain district, or about want of timber in a certain district, or about other things in a certain district, he must name the district, and, consequently, it is quite a simple matter to trace the complaint to the individual place in that district, and even to the individual man who is working in the district. We are glad to know that the Minister is considering the question of State-paid deputies and one or two of the other points that were raised. I listened to his peroration with rapt attention, and was very pleased to hear it, and I feel that it was a sincere expression of his sympathy and desire to do something to ensure safety for the miners; but I want him to be courageous and bold in taking steps and in using his Department with all the power and force that he can during his term of office, for the purpose of doing his best to modify to a considerable extent the accidents that are now occurring in the mines of this country.

Mr. POTTS: The question of accidents in the mining industry is one of the most important that we have to consider. In confirmation of what has already been said, I would point out that, while the number of employés in the mining industry is going down, the; proportion of deaths and accidents is increasing. In the year 1925, there were 1,102,442 people employed in the mines, and the number of people who were laid off work for three days or more owing to injuries was 179,602. But mark the contrast between that and the year named by the Mover of the Motion to-night. In 1927, the number of employés had gone down to 1,023,885, while the number of accidents in the industry remained almost stationary, being 175,028, or only 4,574 less than in 1925. There is, therefore, an actual increase in the proportion of accidents to numbers employed. Taking the numbers actually killed, the figures are 1,072 in 1925, and 1,040 in 1927; so that, while there were 78,557 fewer people employed in the industry in 1927 than in 1925, the number killed was only 32 less. It is most essential that the Secretary for
Mines should set to work to deal with this matter as quickly as he possibly can.
I should like to make one correction. It is not that the Minister does not know the actual facts of the position, but it is simply owing to the way in which those facts may have been put to the Minister, and, consequently, put by him to the House. With regard to prosecutions under the Mines Act, it is not the fact that workmen in the mines can bring prosecutions against the management of any colliery company. They cannot do it; it can only be done, according to the Mines Act itself, through an inspector. If you have a case against the management, you can report it to the inspector, and he can bring a prosecution, but no workmen can bring a prosecution against a colliery company or its officials. On the other hand, it is provided m the Act that a colliery manager can bring prosecutions against workpeople. The Minister's statement on this point will certainly be reported in the newspapers, and it ought not to go out in the form in which he put it to the House.
I am very pleased to hear that the Minister is giving consideration to the appointment of inspectors, and is going to give a lead in that direction. I should like to point out to him that we have been arguing to my knowledge for 40 years for the appointment of a number of inspectors from among practical men working in the mining industry itself. At the present moment only certificated people can be appointed inspectors, and I hope that the Minister will remove that barrier as soon as he can, so that practical men may be appointed. I do not suggest that they should all be practical men. That cannot be, because there must be some men with the qualifications indicated by certification. But it is not necessary that 50 per cent. of those who are appointed inspectors of mines should bold first or second-class certificates; we want a majority of practical men with a knowledge of mining, who know what accidents happen and what causes them, and whose work it would be to investigate the mines by inspection day by day, which cannot be done by the inspectorate as it exists to-day. That would reduce the number of accidents, and assist in tracing their causes.
I happened to be a member of a Commission, which included representatives of the employers, appointed to investigate the question of timber in the industry during the War. We investigated the use of timber, concrete, all kinds of pipes inlaid with concrete, and so on, but the decision we arrived at from practical experience was that timber was the most useful thing that could be used. In the main roads it is possible to use steel, but, as a practical man who has been negotiating for some 40 years between owners and workmen, I know that timber is essential and is better than steel so far as the coal face is concerned.
Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House deplores the heavy loss of life and the large number of non-fatal accidents in coal mines, and is of opinion that every possible step should be taken without delay to secure the fullest protection possible to those engaged in this dangerous industry.

NATIONALISATION OF TRANSPORT.

Mr. BROAD: I beg to move,
That this House views with concern the lack of adequate co-ordination in the transport system of Great Britain, deplores the economic waste and impediments to development and efficiency inseparable from the existence of competitive undertakings in this field, and, whilst ready to encourage any well-considered schemes of co-ordination which are consistent with the public interest, considers that a solution can only be found in the nationalisation of railways and long-distance road transport.
This Motion calls attention to the present position and future prospects of the railway and long-distance transport in this country, expresses concern at its condition, and proposes a solution which I trust will receive the approval of this House. We hear on all hands that the industrial and commercial position of the country is very difficult. Not alone has this been caused by the evolution of electrical and transport inventions, nor even perhaps by the circumstances of the War, but more by the profiteering which went on directly after the War. We find that our industrial system is unbalanced, that those who were once our customers for iron, steel, and coal are endeavouring to find alternative methods of obtaining fuel or power, and of otherwise getting the
material they require. They feel that for the future they must to some extent be independent of the people who profiteered at their expense during the War. So we see a great disturbance economically all over the world, and we know full well that our great staple industries cannot ever recover the position they occupied relatively to the rest of the world previous to the War. We are told, also, that those countries now developing in competition with ourselves are the last word in regard to up-to-date methods both of machinery and appliances, and also skilled organisation, and that we must overhaul our own system; we must rationalise. That means from their point of view, as far as productive industry is concerned, that we must utilise the most efficient methods, that we must eliminate waste, and that we must concentrate upon the most efficient equipment where we have a redundancy of equipment for our requirements. There is another sense in which the word "rationalisation" comes in, and that is the sense in which we used it when we were short of meat and butter in the War. In a short time we had to ration our requirements to the supplies available. To-day, we are told, rather, that we have to ration our sources of production to the effective demand. We are told that we must put an end to cut-throat competition in industries and services and utilise what we have to the best advantage, if we are to be in a position to compete. That new principle, now generally accepted, from all points of view, marks the end of a period of our economic history. Once the Liberal party was the political expression of individualism and competition. To-day, in industry there is no individualism and little competition. They have proved to be so wasteful that we are doing our best to eliminate them.
In this connection, we must look at one of the great factors in our trade, commerce, and industry, and that is the transport facilities both for passengers and for goods. There is no doubt that in that respect we have been very unfortunately served in the past. In the main, the railways have stood practically still for about 40 years, with the exception of some sensational runs of nonstop trains from London to Edinburgh and so on. The railway trucks, the methods of handling them, and the methods of handling the services—every-
thing has stood practically still. The railways have practically a monopoly and the principle of that monopoly was private interest. You were to charge as much in the interest of the shareholders as the traffic would bear. You were to squeeze as much out of it as you could. The railways distributed all that was available year by year in dividends, not looking for the time when their old stations and plant would be out of date and ready for replacement. When those replacements had to take place, new capital was raised, and so there was more capital to bear interest. That went on until you had this position which has been described in very important words by a great authority on the railways who has had a very effective part in their conduct and who was once regarded as a very great genius by the united parties, as they were then, who sit opposite this evening. I refer to Sir Eric Geddes, who when the Railway Act was being discussed in this House in 1921 said this:
Before the War the value of the shares in railways was declining and the difficulty of raising capital was increasing. Their future, their organisation, and their finance was the subject of grave consideration right down to the year before the War.
I do not think anyone would dispute that. The outlook was then very gloomy, and then there was no question of road transport. We had hundreds of companies with directors and with shares in the hands of trustees widely distributed over large areas. We found that there was no effective control by the shareholders. Their interests were entirely in the hands of the directors. There was no control from public opinion, because the newspapers in the main rely to some extent upon the railways for advertisements and would not publish complaints. There was no control from the public authority or the House of Commons, and the railways were slipping back and back into a most uneconomic position when the War broke out. The Government of that day, for the sake of the national position, had to put an end to that state of affairs by suspending the operations of the directors and of the clearing house, and by grouping the railways under a railway control board which ran them for the nation during the War. The result of that hotch-potch arrangement, temporarily made for the War period, was phenomenal. So much so, that on all
hands it was agreed that we could never allow the country to go back to the position which existed in p re-War days. When the War was over, people who were not Socialists with a pet hobby of nationalisation, but leaders of the Coalition Government of that time, declared that the Government's policy was to nationalise the railways. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), a great Minister in that Government, on 5th December, 1918, said that the Government policy was the nationalisation of the railways. That great step they had at last decided to take. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) said in the same year:
The problem of transportation has been left largely to chance. The roads, the canals, the railways and the trams are all vital to the life of industry and to the country. That problem must be taken in hand under the direct inspiration and control of the State.
Again the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping said:
We cannot organise the great questions of land settlement, of new industries, and the extension of production in this State without control of the means of transportation.
But the courage of these gentlemen failed them. In the Coalition after the War there were too many hard-faced people who had done well out of the War to permit of the opinions of the Member for Epping and the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs being adopted. They decided that it would not be good from their political point of view to carry out their first intention, and so they made a mess of the whole thing by splitting the country into four great areas with different railway groups. We know that they eliminated some of the shareholders and some of the railway directors and grouped the shares together, but they failed in the great necessity of the time, namely, the organisation of the railway transport system as a whole. The railways started off with a nest egg of £60,000,000 to compensate them for the extra profits which they might have made during the War. Still we see the railways in a pitiful position, not perhaps compared with 70 or 80 years ago, but compared with what they might be. We hear complaints from all hands. I live in an area where tens of thousands of people are in misery day by day because
there are not the travelling facilities which one railway company would have provided, but which they were prevented from providing by another railway company. We see that all the way round; one company fighting against the other's interest. According to one computation, taking the whole history of the railway companies, at least one-third of their total capital is represented by Parliamentary expenses and lawyer's fees. All that might have been saved by proper co-ordination.
The railway companies, no doubt, thought that they had got away very well. Before the Act of 1921 was passed, when the Government was responsible for their dividends, they had done a great deal to rehabilitate the railways. I have never seen the railways of this country look quite so smart and trim, or their tracks in such good condition, as they were just previous to their being handed over to the groups. But again they adopted an attitude that they should charge as much for the traffic as it could possibly bear. Their freights were raised, their fares were raised, and they failed to realise the great new factor of road transport. Road transport is developing in every direction. There is no doubt that the prospect in front of the shareholders is very gloomy and that it will only be the debenture holders who will get any return in the near future and the prospect for the employés on the railways is very bad indeed. There is a railway rates tribunal which fixes rates on a level which will secure to the railways their pre-War profits. But the traffic is being taken away from them more and more. Traders and producers are relying more and more on road transport, not alone because of the cost, but because of the delay, the damage to their goods, and the lack of provision of the facilities which they require.
We are concerned about the beet industry. Three or four years in succession the association representing that industry and the chairman of that association have drawn attention to the grave effect on the production on beet of the lack of truck facilities. Coal trucks have been standing idle because of the depression in our coal industry. Many of the beet companies at great expense have had to purchase great steam lorries to carry the goods by road which the railways have
neglected to carry for them. We all know that railways are all very well if you are going from one big town to another, but we know the condition of some of the railway carriages which we used a few years ago. A year or two back, I was travelling in South Wales and I happened to take a workman's train. It had on it one of the earliest carriages used by the Metropolitan Railway Company before that line was electrified 20 years ago. That is the kind of thing which is thought good enough for British working men. We all know the comfort of sitting in a road coach compared with the second or third class compartments on the railways.
That is the position of the railways. It is due to the fact that there is no effective control. The directors of the railway companies are not concerned with the giving of good services. They are concerned with looking after profits and seeing that they are maintained, and so badly do they do that that the poor shareholders have very poor prospects indeed. We know the position. It is not a case of knowledge gained from a life service on the railways or of understanding the position from top to bottom. A figure head from another place is usually chosen, or a lawyer who can plead the case in this House. These people have been mutually appointed. They mutually appoint one another to directorships. Many hon. Members in this House hold these directorships by the dozen and by the score. I say that proper attention cannot be given by them. We should not tolerate the position in any public service. We have clever and able managers eating out their hearts in order to do the right thing, but the directors say "Oh, we cannot raise the money." That is the position. They cannot raise the money because the investing public will not invest money in railways to day unless the railways are subsidised by a guarantee loan, and by a guarantee that it shall be interest free for a number of years. Three-quarters of the local rates of the railway companies are being cut down so that they can reduce their costs and all the time we find that more and more traffic is being diverted to the roads both for passenger and goods purposes.
I notice that there is an Amendment on the Order Paper. I am going to summarise it in the old way of laissez faire. Let things be. Let these things
work themselves out. We have seen the result of that in London's traffic, where we had the companies in the position that although they did their best to compete and improve their services the only way they could do so was by ruining themselves and starving out the smaller people—seeing which could be the biggest lion in the jungle. I know something of the cost of that. When, with the assistance of friends, a little man home from the War put an omnibus on the road the Combine put two or three of their most ruthless drivers to hound that man and his mate to death. Many accidents were caused by it. There were always convenient witnesses in the small man's omnibus to say that it was his fault. It would take quite a decent cemetery to hold the people who were slaughtered when they were driving the private omnibuses out of competition. That is what we shall see in this country when the railways fight road transport. We have given the railways road transport facilities. They can develop. I want the House to realise that we cannot afford that position. If the railways are going to compete on the road with road services they are going to neglect their own railways and allow them to fall into decay. Can we afford to allow the railways to fall into decay? There are a great many of our industries which can only be served by railway traffic—coal, iron and steel and heavy goods and so on. Just in proportion as the traffic is diverted from the railways to the roads so will the railways by their competition kill their traffic on the line in regard to the more profitable class of traffic which they carry, and on the other hand, they will kill the very industries which they should be there to serve. That is the position in which we find ourselves.
We know that we are far behind other countries in these railway questions. We have to compete with a reconstructed Germany whose railway fares and whose freights are infinitely lower than our own, and whose railway services are better and safer. The railway companies in this country under the present management, even unified into four groups, find themselves unable to deal with the situation. There is a great deal to be done. We have seen the same position arise in other countries. In Canada they had a great group of companies in such an
impossible position owing to private management and ownership that, although they have been bolstered up by loans to pay running charges for many years, they had to come to the position of saying they could run no longer. The Federal Parliament of Canada then decided to take over these lines. They took from us an officer, Sir Henry Thornton, who was willing to do good work for this country, and who, if given a chance here, would have been capable of handling this great question, to take control over there. Compare the position of those railways to-day in Canada with what they were.
In the whole of the British Empire we find that there are 108,523 miles of railways, and that only 26,355 miles—less than a quarter—are privately owned because our brothers and our cousins in the Dominions are wiser statesmen. In India and in the Crown Colonies they have realised that they dare not leave the essential feature of transport to private enterprise, and for the sake of the development of their countries and the services of their people they have undertaken railways as great State enterprises. We have seen the result. The railways there are more up-to-date. Even in this evening's paper I see that a State railway line from Bombay has just opened 109 miles of electrified railway. Think of the position as far as London traffic and that of other great centres is concerned if we could electrify our railways!
We dare not allow the competition to go on on the main roads of the country. If we allow it to develop much longer it will mean that the isolated transport companies dealing with goods traffic owning 10, 15, or 20 lorries will be linked together, with proper receiving and dispatching offices up and down the country running regular services along the roads in a way that it will be impossible for the railways to compete with them. If the railways endeavour to compete on the roads our roads will become increasingly dangerous. The cost of the wear and tear of the roads will be greater still. We dare not face that position. Laissez faire is not good enough. If we allow this thing to develop, it will mean that great vested interests will grow up again which will be more difficult to handle. In the past we have seen the position of the vested
interests in this country, right away through, before the War, from the time when Mr. Gladstone, in 1844, brought in the Railway Bill which is now an Act of Parliament giving powers to the Government to take over railways from private ownership. He had to modify his terms on account of the great railway interests which were represented. This has been the position right away through. Railway interests have corrupted this House in years gone by. In connection with road transport we are glad to recognise the need for rationalisation, as it is called, which means the unification of our great services. We have recognised that in other respects rationalisation means unification. It means that either the nation must own the monopolies or the monopolies will own the nation.
There is no new principle in this. Twenty-five years ago the Port of London was falling into decay—ill-equipped, badly managed, one dock competing against the other. The docks were silting up. We were concerned about London until one of the greatest achievements, perhaps, of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, who brought forward a scheme for the unification of the Port of London under the Port of London Authority, which now conducts this work for the service and trade of the people and not for the profit of individuals. To-day we can feel proud of London; as a port, the leading port of the country. While we may not be satisfied with all the conditions of the workers, I think that no one can say that the achievements since those days have not been wonderful so far as the Port of London is concerned.
Thirty years ago the water supply of London was in a deplorable condition under private companies. The position in regard to the health of the people became alarming. In many districts the water was only turned on for one hour a day during a drought. In some of the tenement houses in Inner London there were seven or eight families in an eight or nine-roomed house depending upon one water tap one hour a day, and water was stored under the beds. We were told that we must finance a great company to bring water from Wales. Again the Government had to step in and unify the water supply of London and put it in the hands of a public authority. The popu-
lation of Greater London served by the Metropolitan Water Board has probably doubled since that time, and yet through the remarkable drought of this summer we had not to go short of water except for our golf courses and lawns.
With telephones it was the same. Telephones were run by a private company. Their whole system was obsolete. Although at an earlier date the Post Office had been compelled by Parliament to put its telegraph wires underground the telephone company had covered London with wires and posts which had fallen into decay and become a menace to the people. Again, when that system was neglected, and it was impossible to keep up-to-date, Parliament had to step in and take over the telephones and had to bear the cost of fitting wires underground. We know by experience as far as our railway companies are concerned that competition is absolutely unnecessary. We dare not allow the road transport to grow up throughout the country, as far as both passengers and goods are concerned, in the chaotic way in which it developed in London after the War. The only solution to that in my opinion and in the honest opinion of some of our right hon. Friends in the Liberal party—the only sound economic solution in the minds of any of us here, I am convinced is the one which I propose here to-night and the one which is contained in the manifesto of the Labour party called "Labour and the Nation," which says:
The Labour Government would undertake the task of transferring the railways to public ownership and control and would encourage the extension of municipal transport enterprises working in co-ordination with the road system. Similarly it would take all possible steps to co-ordinate railway and road transport for the more efficient and economic distribution of industry.
8.0 p.m.
That is the position, then, upon which we shall vote to-night. Our Government has done its best in foreign affairs; in that respect it stands out, I think, in comparison far ahead of any other Government which we have had in our day and generation, either previously to the War or since. The Government has done its best, and has promised to do still more, in the development of social services, much of which is equivalent simply to putting plasters on sores; but I think we in this Parliament have a mandate
to do the work which has been so neglected by Parliament ever since the War—to do some great work of economic reconstruction which will put trade and industry on their feet again, and which will give a prospect of employment at decent wages and hours to the men engaged in the railway industry and other industries with which the railways are so intimately concerned.

Mr. BOWEN: I beg to second the Motion.
I feel happy to associate myself with the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Broad) who has just spoken, in opening the discussion on such an important question. The question of the nationalisation of railways is by no means a new subject, and I can easily contemplate that we are likely to receive to-night the same amount of objection that we have received in the past to the policy of nationalisation. I approach the subject with a good deal of hesitancy, because of its great character, and because of the immensity of the case. Much could be said upon it, but one has to confine oneself to reasonable limits in dealing with the question.
The Motion refers to nationalisation of the railways and of long-distance motor traffic. The Motion almost explains itself in the relation between railway traffic and long-distance motor traffic. I have, for the moment, a special regard to the question as it affects the railways. To me, it is highly important, because no one can deny that the railway system of this country has grown to enormous dimensions and is an industry which has a very great effect upon the community in providing both for the transport of goods and for the transport of passengers. It has become a public necessity; it has become so great a necessity that we cannot conceive that there is any possibility that the railway system in this country should some day be disbanded. It is part of our daily life. It is an industry which has absorbed millions of money, and is an industry which gives employment to many hundreds of thousands of excellent citizens of the country, men who can be regarded as of the best type of public servants, comparing them with public servants in all phases of our national life. They give
good service, and, as such, can be regarded as men deserving of consideration, in conjunction with the national railway system as a whole.
That pre-supposes something else. If the national railway system has become a necessity, it must be regarded as being practically a national property. It is a national property in the sense that the railway companies could not have existed without having obtained from this House various substantial powers which gave the property owners and the railways an acquisition of considerable importance, which in its turn involves a demand by the community from the railway companies of a recognition of the fact that, having obtained such powers, the railway companies must regard themselves as being nationally responsible. If I am right in that, the next step is easily taken. Public responsibility of the railways and railway companies should take into account the necessities of the community in every respect. The first policy of a railway company, however, is not so much a question of public service as it is a question of shareholders' dividends, and in the conflict between those two factors we find ourselves in very difficult circumstances.
Competition between railway companies has been responsible for a very large amount of waste, both of the money of shareholders and of public money, and certainly in regard to the railway staff itself. But this competition between railways and railway companies has already been condemned. In the Report of the Select Committee on Transport in 1918 it was stated that there should be a single ownership and a single management of all the main railway systems. That was the unanimous Report of a body representative of all parties. But in 1921 the Government of the day was able to get through a Bill which set up four railway trusts. All these railway trusts are competing and overlapping at various points at the present time. The Bill of 1921 was severely criticised from the Labour Benches because it was regarded as a compromise between rival interests; it did not make an attempt to bring the railway systems into real relation with national life and national problems. This criticism has surely been justified by subsequent events. The problem which faced this
House in 1921 still remains to be solved; and, whatever beneficial results that Act of 1921 may have had in some directions, the simple fact remains that conditions on the railways have become steadily worse, and new factors have come into the case—for example, the intensification of road competition—which give us a problem of greater magnitude than ever.
The railways still require action to be taken to put them into a healthy position, but I am not encouraged to believe that we are going to have any initiative from the railway companies themselves. Sir Josiah Stamp, in his presidential address to railway students of the London School of Economics, at their annual meeting of 1927–8, gave an imposing list of well-known economies and other advantages to be gained by amalgamation. Incidentally, I believe I am right in saying that the London, Midland and Scottish Railway saved about £8,000,000 per annum through the 1921 amalgamation. I have no doubt that those economies were effected partly at the expense of the railway workers, and I have no doubt that they were effected at the expense of the public in general. But, dealing with the problem as it exists in the United States, Sir Josiah Stamp said that there, as also here, the railway authorities themselves oppose suggestions of compulsory amalgamation such as would be secured by national ownership. Their argument was that "they prefer to follow the line of least resistance and amalgamate along their own lines and according to their own interests for some time to come." But in the United States, as has been our experience here, private enterprise is far too slow in bringing about readjustments to changed conditions and changed public needs. Leaving private enterprise to reorganise industry and transport simply means, in effect, that all the interests engage in a struggle to protect the personal privileges and prospects of directors and shareholders. The strong competitors stand out in the confident anticipation of driving a still harder bargain with the weak ones, and the public interest in these big movements is apt to be forgotten. Indeed, I should like to put it more strongly than that; it is forgotten.
In 1921 the State had to step in to secure a half-measure of reform. That work, then only half done, remains to be completed. Now it requires to be taken
into consideration with that new factor, which I have mentioned, of road competition. If we expect directors of railway companies to give us much hope that the existing competition between the four companies will bring about the necessary reform—I leave it to other speakers, who will, I hope, follow me, to give examples of many difficulties in that respect—I think we are going to be disappointed. For reasons which I have already stated, it is not in the interests of directors to promote amalgamations where it is possible otherwise to maintain a service satisfactory to their shareholders. I am, however, reminded that amalgamations are very frequently forced upon weak competitors, and you have trusts set up, the result of which is reflected in increased prices, and so on. But, if we were going to rely upon the directors, I should be very much discouraged by what has been said by a very prominent gentleman, who, I am willing frankly to admit, is entitled to speak with some authority on this question. Railway directors are only part-timers; they have other interests; and, because they are able to direct their attention to all those other interests, I have a very great respect for those directors.
How some of the directors of railway companies can manage to have 21 directorships, as in one case, or 18 directorships, as in another case, I simply cannot understand; but, being a simple person, I can only take the figures as they come to me, and I find that 23 directors of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company hold among them at least 181 directorships. Hon. Members opposite, who may themselves be directors, may be able to explain how it is done. Frankly, I cannot understand. I cannot believe that it is possible for really effective public work to be done by directors in that way. As I said, I am willing to accept the authority of a prominent gentleman, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. He, speaking in Glasgow, on the 22nd November, 1928, said:
Since the days when private industry gave place to the joint stock company, there have battened on the joint stock companies large numbers of men connected with management, and directors, who are parasitical to industry, and nothing but parasitical.
I am quite willing to leave that statement with the House, and to let it soak
right in, because I cannot add to such an expression. Railway losses are large. Between 1923 and 1928 they have lost heavily to road passenger transport services in respect of their short-distance traffic. The estimated passenger revenue of the railways in 1928 was £10,000,000 less than in 1923, or 14 per cent. less. The railways are now endeavouring to meet this competition by agreement with the principal omnibus companies. In 1928, however, the number of passengers carried by the railways was over 100,000,000 more than in any pre-War year. The House can see, therefore, that there is a connection between the railways and road transport which is a matter of prime public importance, and that relation ought, if possible, to be brought more closely together for examination, as is suggested in the Motion.
The serious competition for goods traffic is having its effect upon the railway companies. Indeed, while the whole goods traffic depends very largely, almost entirely, upon the general state of trade, the simple fact has to be admitted that by depression and the competition of road transport the railways have been hit in a double way. The House will know that since 1914 there has been an enormous increase in road transport. In 1919, there were only 38,000 commercial goods vehicles licensed. During the five years, from 1922 to 1927, the number of licences for commercial goods vehicles increased by nearly 80 per cent.—from 159,000 in November, 1922, to 283,000 in November, 1927. The estimated number licensed in 1929 is 300,000. It has, further, been estimated by an eminent man that 50,000 motor vehicles are now doing work which 10 years ago was done by the railways. The railways are endeavouring to cope with the competition of the omnibus services on short-distance traffic routes, but as yet they have done little or nothing to deal with the question of goods transport.
The problem, to us, is one of serious importance. We have to take into account the fact that with the increasing motor transport service vested interests are growing up which have to be met sooner or later in the endeavour to find some sort of understanding, agreement or co-ordination between railways and motor transport dealing with a limited
amount of traffic. The problem is not only that there are large and small motor haulage companies competing with the railways on long-distance transport, but also that many large private firms have organised their own road haulage and delivery fleets. It is obvious that railways and motor transport must be coordinated, each concentrating upon the types of traffic best suitable to the service, in which it can show a natural superiority. For instance, motor transport cannot equal the railways in fast long-distance traffic. If nationalisation is not introduced, we are likely to get more trouble in the future than in the past.
There is one point of view which may be expressed that I should like to mention. I have been interested in a statement made in this House on the 24th April, 1928, by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. He said:
We have seen in late years road transport increasingly taking many forms of traffic from the railways. If the road vehicles, which carry these forms of traffic, inflict far more injury on the roads than they pay for, the competition ceases to be fair, and an injury is done to the community at large. It is the duty of the State to hold the balance even between road and rail, and to let the best form of transport win on its merits.
I cannot subscribe to that view. I should regard it as a national calamity if the great bulk of our transport were transferred from the railways to the road. The railways would be ruined and also the men connected with them, and the roads would be so congested that life would not be tolerable. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that:
It would not be in the public interest—and this is one of the foundations of my argument—to spend in the next few years several hundreds of millions of additional money upon the roads, apart from the present grants upon the roads, if the result were to render artificially and prematurely obsolete the splendid British railway systems, which represent a thousand million pounds of national capital, and afford employment to 700,000 men. We need both road and rail communications, and it is the task of Parliament to regulate the relations between them in the true proportion, having regard to their competing interests, into harmony with the general interest."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th April, 1928; col. 856, Vol. 216.]
The policy of balancing one private interest against another is not the right
way to serve the public. We think that it could be better achieved by the method that we propose to the House. When I come to the question of the cost of motor transport, am I not right in saying that the cheapness of road transport is usually estimated without reference to total cost? When I say "total cost," I mean including the upkeep of roads, which does not reflect itself in motor transport fares. Much of the cost falls upon the ratepayers and the taxpayers in the construction and maintenance of roads and the lighting and additional policing of roads. Apart from the damage done to the roads by heavy and fast motor traffic, there is also the cost of reconstructing roads or widening them, rebuilding bridges, and so on. When road transport takes traffic from the railways, there is a double burden upon the whole community, first by increasing the cost of road repair, and, second, by increasing the cost of goods and passenger traffic which must go by railway, and for which the railways must exact the necessary toll. In that way, unfortunately, our basic heavy industries, coal, iron, steel and so on, suffer. This cannot go on.
There seems to us to be no reason why we cannot now face up to what has been calling for attention for many years past and see whether we cannot establish an understanding on a recognised policy of nationalisation of the railways and nationalisation of road transport. There are some advantages which would accrue that might be pointed out, but I will not place them too highly at the moment, because I appreciate the fact that we are dealing with a very important industry. So far as it serves the purpose, let me instance this point, that if we had the railways State-owned and controlled there would be far better and more effective economies and better public services accruing if we took into account the possibilities of co-ordination between the railways and the Post Office in many respects.
There are thousands, tens of thousands, of Post Office employés on part-time jobs at starvation rates of pay, there are thousands of railway men in small jobs at small rates of pay, which cannot be regarded as giving them anything like the necessary standard of living. There may be possibilities—in fact I am sure there
are—of co-ordinating certain services between the Post Office and railways which would find whole-time employment for many men who are now below the starvation level. In Germany, they have about 7,000 motor vehicles which carry passengers as well as mails. In 1926, over 36,000,000 passengers were carried, and these services are commercially profitable. In this country—and let the House understand this—State-owned services are entering into competition with railways and other forms of motor transport, and I should like to see the State repeat its success in other directions in competition with institutions which are not doing as well as they ought to do. The British Post Office has at least over 2,000 motor vehicles for mail work. They take the mail work from the railway systems, and, if this increases, the condition of the railways will be very parlous indeed. They have, in addition, 1,500 cars or vehicles; in fact, the Post Office has the second largest fleet in the country. Prior to the grant of road transport costs, this is how the railways worked out. They have 3,421 motor lorries and 31,700 horse drawn vehicles. I wonder whether the railway companies have woke up to the fact that that sort of system and service is bad for themselves as well as for the public.
My submission to the House is that we cannot afford to have a derelict and starving railway system. We cannot afford to have a too highly developed road service; life would be unbearable. Transport generally, railways, roads, canals, rivers—all are important, and airways must be taken into account, and co-ordination therefore is becoming increasingly necessary. How is this going to be done? I do not profess to be able to give the House a scheme to-night as to how these things can be done, but what I press for is that every consideration shall be given to the actual difficulties which face us, to the problem before us, and not wake up to the facts before it is too late. If the Government are called in to hold and control a nationalised service, let it not be said from the other side that it means the introduction of any number of civil servants who will have nothing to do. That is not our proposition. Most people understand that that is not how the Civil Service is carried on. It is not how a civil servant works.
Most people understand that is not how a nationalised industry is carried on.
In this connection, there are three suggestions as to how railways can be controlled and transport services can be taken in hand. First, by a Government Department, secondly, by an administrative council responsible to the Government, and representing the various interests, staff, public industry and so on, and, thirdly, leasing properties to a private company as the late Government did in leasing the beam service to the Imperial International Communications Company. If I might suggest something it would be this, that whenever anything of this nature is set up, care should be exercised to see that these services are not used, first, as a means of taxation, secondly, that they should not be used as a means of subsidising other interests, thirdly, that everything should be done to avoid a too rigid Treasury control, fourthly, that they should permit the formation of reserves for capital expenditure and development, and, fifthly, that there should be given to the staff, railway and transport staff, a real measure of staff consultation in all matters concerning the services.
Finally, I suggest to the House that the railway could without practical difficulty be transferred to public ownership. Many tramways and omnibus services are already owned and operated by local authorities. Motor road transport, commercial and passenger traffic, are not sufficiently developed to be merged into a single service, but the Minister of Transport should be concerned with the extensions of public enterprise there and a co-ordination of these various transport services in order that each may occupy its proper place in the national system. Shareholders have a right to the value of their shares subject to a fair assessment. I do not propose to rob shareholders, although it is possible a good many deserve it, but that is by the way. I commend the Motion to the House in the hope that in the discussion which will follow we shall have some indication from the Opposition that they are with us in regard to the need there is for urgent attention being given to this important question.

Captain WALLACE: It is not very often, during the last four or five years,
owing to circumstances over which I have had little control, that I have trespassed upon the time of the House, and I admit that I rise with a feeling almost akin to that trepidation which I first felt in 1922. Everyone will be grateful to the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Broad) for having put down this extremely important Motion as the result of his luck in the ballot. It does not surprise me that he should have chosen to deal with the question of transport, because he and I have been associated in the past with some efforts to secure some improvement in London traffic facilities. I am glad it has fallen to the lot of the present Minister of Transport, with the assistance of the Lord Privy Seal, to sanction the tube from Finsbury Park, which the hon. Member and I have so long urged. To my mind the speech of the Mover dealt almost entirely with one aspect, and that a minor aspect, of the Motion. His speech was confined to a criticism of the railways as they exist at present. He maintained that the railways had stood still for the past 40 years, a dictum with which the Lord Privy Seal and the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Bromley) will scarcely agree. He made charges which he would have difficulty in substantiating outside these walls against the newspapers of the country. He accused them of wholesale corruption.

Mr. BROAD: I said they were influenced by the fact that they get large advertisements from railway companies.

Captain WALLACE: I do not want to misrepresent the hon. Member for a moment, but it amounts to the same thing. He made charges of idleness and inefficiency against directors, and having done with the railways he proceeded to attack what we know as the London traffic combine and made statements, which I regret, as to their action in connection with what we know as pirate omnibuses. In effect he said that these vehicles were driven off the streets, that accidents were practically engineered, and witnesses put into convenient positions, a charge which almost amounts to murder. It is not my place to pursue that matter further, because it is outside the scope of the Motion, but I ask the hon. Member what is going to happen under the scheme of nationalisation to the small
man, with whom we have all the greatest sympathy? Are these ex-service men to be allowed to run their omnibuses against the nationalised service? [HON, MEMBERS: "No!"] I did not think so. The hon. Member went on to speak of transport in Canada and he explained to us that—largely owing to a very efficient gentleman who had worked under private enterprise in this country—the State railways in Canada were in a sound position and he left the impression in my mind that it was only the State-owned railways in Canada which had been a success. But I think every Member within these walls must have heard of that great corporation, the Canadian Pacific Railway, one of the greatest monuments to successful private enterprise and development in the history of the British Empire.
The seconder of the Motion made a speech which was full of interesting facts and figures. The hon. Member is, I believe, new to the House although this is not his maiden speech, and I am certain that we shall listen to his contributions with interest on other occasions. It seemed to me that he devoted himself to precisely the same aspect of the case as that which had been so ably, I may say so exhaustively, dealt with by the Mover. The burden of his song was that the railways were inefficient and that the public interest was forgotten in their direction and management. He also explained to us very lucidly, supported by most interesting figures, some of the difficulties in which the railways have become involved during the past few years in connection with road transport competition. Does he really believe that all these difficulties, genuine and admitted as they are, are necessarily inherent in the system of private enterprise? Does he not think that road competition would have come in any case? That some of the difficulties which the railways have experienced, for instance in connection with short distance passenger transport, are due to the normal course of evolution and are difficulties which would have had to be faced in any case and which, indeed, are being successfully faced, under the present system?
The hon. Member made one other observation to which I would direct attention. He referred to the number of part-time railway employés and Post Office officials whose duties might be amalga-
mated. Does he suggest that under a scheme of nationalisation there would be considerable dismissals of those employés? It is impossible to have it both ways. You cannot create a number of whole-time jobs out of a larger number of half-time jobs without getting rid of the surplus labour. I agree with him that nobody in this House wishes to see in this country a derelict or starving railway system. I do not think that those of us who have the opportunity of travelling up and down the country every week-end on those nice free railway passes—I have not one myself, because I represent a London constituency—would like to admit that the standard of speed, comfort, safety, refreshment and courtesy indicates in any way a derelict or starving system. I cannot help thinking that the hon. Member will have some trouble with the Lord Privy Seal when that very overworked Minister has time to read the OFFICIAL REPORT. The Seconder of the Motion also suggested that not only the railways and long distance transport, but also air transport might be nationalised. Does he intend to include coastwise shipping as well? [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I only want to know, because if you embark on a scheme of this kind you will find it hard to draw the line. It will be interesting to know from the Minister of Transport if it is seriously proposed to carry out that part of the programme which is printed on page 28 of "Labour and the Nation," with regard to the nationalisation of the transport system.
I hope that the criticisms or comments which I have tried to make on the speeches of the Mover and Seconder are perfectly fair and I turn for a moment to the question which really ought to have been discussed during the past hour and a quarter and that is the solution which this Motion advocates. We have been told nothing as to how nationalisation is to be brought about. I was going to ask whether railway shareholders were to be compensated, but I understand from one of the closing sentences of the Seconder that they are. That at once raises the question of how that money is going to be raised. If this capital is to be provided by the taxpayer, the only way in which the State can derive immediate benefit from an operation of this
kind is if they are able to substitute at once a very much more efficient management. That, I think, with all respect to the Civil Service, they would find it difficult to do. But for whose benefit is nationalisation, if it can be put into operation, to take place? Is it to benefit the State revenues? Is it for the benefit of the users of the railways or for the benefit of the employés? It will be admitted that any step of this kind must of necessity be somewhat of a leap in the dark. We are bound to depend for our information on precedent. If it is a question of benefiting the State revenue, I should like to instance the position of the Government-owned railways in Australia which in the eight years, 1918 to 1926, did not benefit the State revenues, but cost them £16,500,000; and also the Canadian National Railway which, after it was taken over by the Government, had a slightly increased deficit. One could go on for a long time with these statistics.

Mr. BROAD: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the net operating profit of the Canadian railways rose from 2,887,000 dollars in 1923 to 52,000,000 dollars in 1928?

Captain WALLACE: Was that the Canadian National or the Canadian Pacific Railway?

Mr. BROAD: The Canadian National Railway.

Captain WALLACE: If the hon. Member says so, I am sure it is correct. I was, as a matter of fact, referring to the increased deficit in 1927 over 1926, and I am very glad to hear that it has done better in 1928. As far as the user is concerned, may I instance the case of the Belgian railways? They were State-owned for many years, and in 1914, after some 60 or 70 years, the users of the railways, the industries of Belgium, made a united protest against their inefficiency. Eventually that protest was successful, and in 1926 the railways were handed back to a private corporation. The interesting part of that is that there is a Socialist Government in Belgium, and that this project of handing back the State-owned railways commended itself so much to this particular brand of Socialists that it went through the Chamber by 96 votes to 2, and it went through the Senate unopposed.

The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Herbert Morrison): Is the hon. and gallant Member aware that never yet was there a Socialist Government in Belgium?

Captain WALLACE: They call themselves Socialists, at any rate. Finally, there is the question of whether it is well to nationalise the railways for the benefit of the employês. It was, I think, the Seconder of the Motion who said he hoped that under nationalisation the railwaymen would get decent wages and hours. Is the hon. Member for Barrow (Mr. Bromley) prepared to get up, when he speaks, as we all hope he will, to tell this House that compared with the general standard of living which is possible in industry to-day the railway-men are not getting at any rate as good conditions as any other people in this country? I am certain that the railwaymen are the last people in this country who want to wring, by political pressure, out of the general revenues of the country a greater share of the total national wealth at the expense of people in other trades. I maintain that the Lord Privy Seal and the hon. Member for Barrow and their colleagues have done extremely well for the railwaymen. Indeed, if the Lord Privy Seal is able to do as well for the nation in curing unemployment as he has done for the railwaymen, we shall all be very grateful to him.
If it is a fact, as I have tried to show, that the experience of other countries proves nationalisation of railways to be of no definite benefit, either as regards earning power or efficiency, surely the question of nationalising road transport is very much more difficult and less likely to succeed. The railways at any rate are a comparatively stable industry. They run upon lines which cannot be laid down and picked up at any minute, but road transport is an industry which is spreading all over the country here and there, and its development is very rapid. I do not believe that if this Motion were passed to-night the Government Front Bench would regard it as a mandate to nationalise the railways at once. I believe there are too many people on that Front Bench who are sensible of the difficulties which arise in this direction. Nevertheless, we ought to regard this Motion as a dangerous one, and I, for one, shall vote against it.

Major NATHAN: This Motion raises, as obviously it is meant to raise, the whole controversy of Socialism and anti-Socialism, and I wish to say at once, to make my own position and that of those who sit on these benches clear, that we regard the whole of that issue as barren and sterile. The world moves along at a pretty smart pace, and we are already far removed from the mid-Victorian ideas of laisser faire, and we are even further removed from the early Victorian ideas of a stale and stagnant Socialism. The future lies indeed with a progressive harmonisation of the two conceptions, by no means inconsistent, of individual liberty and the general good; and these proposals, like all proposals which raise this controversy, have to be regarded not in the light of theoretical preconceptions but in the critical light of commonsense, by facing the realities and the facts that confront us.
I say at once that with that part of the Motion which deals with co-ordination of transport we, on these benches, feel a very considerable sympathy. Indeed, the machinery for co-ordination is already largely available. It is not very long since that powers were obtained by the railway companies to acquire road transport rights, but that does not mean that we, on these benches, would be prepared to support the contention that the smaller, struggling, and very largely new and competitive road transport schemes should be brought into one scheme of coordination with the railways, worked under one authority. Whether or not there should be one authority is not a question of principle at all; it is merely a matter of expediency. But tacked on to this Motion is what is neither more nor less than a full-blooded demand for nationalisation both of roads and transport. The Socialist party seem constitutionally unable to get rid of these vicious economics. When they are "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd" by the party Whips, they give a fictitious appearance of leading a new economic life, but the moment the Whips are taken off on a Private Members' night like this they break out again as violently as ever. They have not really signed the pledge against Socialism; they have only promised not to indulge in it too much in public.
This Motion has all the worst characteristics of nationalisation as preached by the Socialists. In the first place, it
comes from a hopelessly prejudiced source, and when I say that, the hon. Members who moved and seconded this Motion will acquit me of any intention of making a personal attack upon them, because this Motion emanates from—

Mr. J. JONES: Moscow!

Major NATHAN: The hon. Member opposite seems to have more information as to its source than I have. I was not going to suggest that its source was further away than Euston Road. It is taken almost word for word from the proposals placed before the Royal Commission on Transport by the Railway Clerks Association, which are set out with some particularity by the Royal Commission on Transport in their recent Second Report. I say that the Railway Clerks Association are a prejudiced source. The roads to them are formidable rivals. They look upon their expansion with all the self-interested horror with which the drivers of the stage coach in generations gone by perceived the pace at which the railway lines crept faster and faster throughout the country.
This Motion shows that the railway clerks have conceived an artful way of combating the menace which they fear. They propose that the railways shall swallow up the roads by Act of Parliament. That is what nationalisation of railways and transport would actually mean. Virtually, the railways would control the roads; indeed, there is no disguise about it, for the Railway Clerks Association in the proposal which they have put forward lay it down, in the words of the Report of the Royal Commission on Transport, that
the national road transport system would become ancillary to the railway system.
9.0 p.m.
would become, in other words, subservient to it; might indeed even be for bidden the way to progressive development. I might reasonably ask hon. Members sitting opposite how otherwise it was to be expected that road transport would be dealt with by the railways.
The railway unions are very highly organised. They have probably a greater influence in this House than even the miners, and there is probably not an hon. Member who sits upon the benches opposite who does not owe his return to the activities of the Railwaymen's Union. We who sit on these benches realise some-
thing of the political power of the railway interests, for we saw at the last election the ferocity with which our road development proposals were attacked by candidates from the Socialist party in the great railway centres. The direct pressure which railwaymen can exercise in this House is very great. The road interests, unrelated and loosely organised, will soon toe crushed by them. A Bill to put railways and roads under one State control would be a Bill to hand over the roads to the railways, and that would be disastrous to industrial development and still more to the agricultural development of this land. Traffic is inevitably being diverted from the railway to the road, but the Lord Privy Seal is trying to blanket road development. He is trying to build a sea wall against a tidal wave. Industry cannot, still less can agriculture, be kept to the straight steel lines of the railroads; they have the whole surface of the countryside in which to manoeuvre. I am not suggesting for a moment that there is merely a black future for the railways. There is, I think, a Bright future for them, but it must be in friendly cooperation, not in malicious competition, with the roads. The railways can be made to feed the roads, and the roads can be made to feed the railways, and any plan which seeks to give the railways more than their fair share will merely restrict the supply available for either. Indeed, the whole proposal exhibits the very worst features of industry run by politicians. At the same time, it is not possible merely to face Socialism with anti-Socialism. Conservative thought is as far removed from industrial realities to-day as Socialist thought. What is the good of lauding private enterprise in railway development? To give lip service to private enterprise in railway development at this time of day is to give lip service to something which no longer, in the true sense of the term, exists. What we need is not a blank opposition to Socialism, but a constructive alternative to Socialism. It is that alternative which the Liberal party presents. I agree with the hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded this Motion that monopolies must be restricted. Monopolies were restricted in regard to railways by no other than the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for
Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was the head, by means of the Railway Act of 1921, and rates, charges and profits are all controlled by the Railway Bates Tribunal. We agree wholeheartedly with those who sit opposite that monopolies must be subject to a measure of control, but to say that that involves nationalisation and State ownership, control and management, is merely a non sequitur.
The amount of loose thought upon this subject was shown by nothing more clearly than by the speeches which have been made this evening on the opposite side of the House. I listened with attention to these speeches, in which, after criticising, with a good deal of justice in some respects, the position under private enterprise of these great monopolies, hon. Members proceeded to illustrate the alternative which they thought proper. I was interested to observe that the Mover of this Motion referred to the Port of London Authority, the Metropolitan Water Board, the Post Office and the telephones, all in the same breath, as instances of nationalisation in contrast with private enterprise. The hon. Gentleman seems to be entirely unaware of the fact that neither the water supply of London nor the Port of London Authority is a nationalised service at all. They both stand on an entirely different footing from the Post Office, which is in truth a State service. The Port of London Authority and the Metropolitan Water Board are public services conducted by ad hoc bodies created for the purpose—by public concerns, to use the phrase coined for the purposes of the Liberal "Yellow Book." They are public concerns, and I believe that the right line of evolution for industries, especially monopoly interests such as railways, is in the direction of public concerns.
Let me illustrate what I mean when I refer to the confusion of thought on the part of hon. Gentlemen opposite in speaking of these public concerns and truly nationalised services in the same breath. The nationalised service, let us say the railways in Australia, involves State ownership, State control and State management, with the result that the administration is at every point and in every controversy exposed to the full pressure of the politicians. The real problem which has been solved by the
creation of the public concerns the Port of London Authority and the Metropolitan Water Board, though not perhaps completely or perfectly solved, has been the divorce of management from the influence of the politicians, to put the public in some form or another in the position of owners, in the place, if you will, of shareholders who have no more rights than shareholders in any other great enterprise, but the right to appoint directors and to remove directors; in that way creating a situation in which business management will be completely divorced from political influence.
That is the general line which the Liberal party advocates in reference to great enterprises such as railways; but I wish to enter this caveat. It is not so very long since the existing four or five railway groups swallowed up a vast number of smaller enterprises, and it may very well be that some little time should be allowed to elapse before taking the next step, in order to give the existing railway systems time to digest the smaller companies which they have so recently absorbed—I do not know; I just enter that caveat. It is along the lines of a public concern, along the lines of some such organisation as the Port of London Authority or the Metropolitan Water Board, that we believe the railways and similar great services might in the end be controlled and managed. Let me add that it is vital in connection with all enterprises of that character that, in contrast with the practice in the past, directors should be appointed not because they represent "interests" but on account of their technical qualifications. Hon. Members opposite and Members of the Conservative party may say that we Liberals want the best of both worlds, that we believe in private enterprise and believe in public control. We do want the best of both worlds, and we see the way to secure it for the people of the country. We want a combination of those two admirable forces, private enterprise and public control, and we believe we can secure it by carrying out the conception which I have outlined this evening. We want to do for private enterprise and for nationalising and socialising enterprises what was done to Sennacherib's army, we want in the one case to put a hook in its nose, and in the other a bridle in its lips.

Mr. ARNOTT: I speak for the first time in the House on this particular topic for two reasons, first, because it does give an opportunity of saying something about the general superiority of public control over private enterprise in dealing with concerns of national importance. Most of the arguments in that direction could have been used with advantage several years ago, but there is a new argument for the nationalisation not so much of railways as of all forms of transport, because, although I am an enthusiastic Socialist, I would not raise a finger or give a vote for the nationalisation of railways if other methods of transport were left out of account. That would be quite as foolish as for a municipality to buy up tramways which were ready to be scrapped and then allow their competitors to put new omnibuses on with the money thus obtained. I believe that transport in this country is now one and indivisible. Arguments have been given from time to time as to the advantage of nationalised railways. Last year, for example, the Noble Lord, the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) admitted that what were really enormous profits were made on the nationalised railways of India. I believe the figure was £8,205,000, of which nearly £5,000,000 went to the relief of the taxpayers in that country. I also note in the OFFICIAL REPORT a speech which was made by the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Johnston) on the advantages of State railways in Australia, the profits that were made by the railways in Nigeria, and the profits made by railways in Canada—in the last-named case after private enterprise, so-called, had failed to run that particular service successfully from the standpoint either of the users or of the State. But those arguments are only useful to us to-day to prove that it is possible to run a nationalised industry without necessarily making a mess of it. For the last three years I have been chairman of one of the most important municipal transport undertakings in this country, and one of the most successful, and I am aware of the difficulties which all these publicly owned concerns have to meet owing to irresponsible competition, and for that reason I put it that the time has come when, if we are to get the best out of our railways and tramways, and our
transport system generally, they must be placed under public ownership.
We have had an interesting speech from the Liberal Benches, interesting because it showed the incoherent ideas, if one can dignify them by the name of ideas, which are prevalent on those benches. The hon. Member said his party believed in disinterested management. I thought "disinterested management" was a phrase applied to the liquor trade, and that the object there was to run that trade so that it could not possibly make a profit and nobody would be interested in carrying it on. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that the phrase would be applied to an undertaking which we could hope to expand and to make successful. Then he told us he believed in individual liberty and co-ordination. What does the word "co-ordination" mean as applied to transport at the present time? We have had committee after committee considering the problem of transport. I hold in my hand the most recent Report dealing with the licensing and regulation of public service vehicles. Where does liberty of private ownership come in at all in dealing with transport? Supposing a man wishes to run an omnibus on the road to carry passengers he must have a licence, and the licensing authority practically say to him, "You can have a licence." To another man the same authority may say, "You cannot have a licence," and they give all sorts of reasons. But, once having granted a licence, the person who receives it becomes a monopolist and he has the sole right to run a certain number of omnibuses on a particular route. Sometimes one or two other persons may be given a similar right, but the competition is restricted in such a way as to make what has been spoken of as individual liberty absolute nonsense.
Co-ordination goes further than that, for it means that the issue of licences has been so limited that it confers a monopoly in given areas either to one authority or the other, and they may be either municipal authorities or private individuals. It might mean a railway company allied with private companies or municipalities. When you once get co-ordination of that kind, you are going a long way in the direction of nationalisation. Up to the present moment, every
speaker in this Debate has admitted that the railways are a public necessity, although the Mover of this Resolution has said many hard things about the railway companies. I think we all realise, however, that the railways are still an asset, and, although many blunders may have been made in the initial stages of the establishment of railways and the carrying on of the work of the railway companies, we cannot afford to allow the railways to become unremunerative.
What are we doing at the present moment? We vote huge sums of public money for the construction of public roads, to provide facilities for private undertakings to transport their goods in motor vehicles, but they are not responsible for the upkeep of the roads, although they wear out, destroy and congest them, and at the same time they take from the railways the most profitable portion of their freights, with the result that the railways are left to carry coal, iron stone and all sorts of heavy goods, and comparatively speaking cheap articles. No railway company in the world can emerge successfully from competition of that description, more particularly in view of the fact that the people who use those roads are for all practical purposes heavily subsidised by the community. It is true that the railway companies have their rails, but that is not an advantage. On the contrary, the rails form a fixed capital charge upon which interest must be paid, and it is obvious that the smaller the number of vehicles, and the smaller the loads they carry, whether passengers or goods, the greater the capital charge on every load. Consequently, under the present system, while we are building up the capital of the country in one direction, we are destroying it in another, and we cannot afford to do that, because we have to convey goods in the most economical way.
For these reasons, I think every person who has considered the subject, carefully, has come to the conclusion that much more co-ordination is necessary between the various forms of transport. The Royal Commission on this question has reported that it is necessary to eliminate a great deal of the competition between these various services, and that it is necessary to secure practically a monopoly of public transport and use the railways for the goods which they are
best adapted to carry, and use the roads for the goods which are more suitable to be carried on the roads. In that way, we should make transport not necessarily an undertaking managed purely from Whitehall, but controlled by a public undertaking. This Resolution excludes local transport, which is managed and controlled municipally. It is well known that local authorities can manage these things much better than private undertakings. In recent years, circumstances have changed, and municipal tramways and privately-owned tramways are now subjected to more unfair competition than the railways. We must have coordination between our local and national services, and, for that reason, we believe that national co-ordination can be best effected and most thoroughly and advantageously carried out by placing the control and ownership of transport facilities in the hands of the State. For these reasons, we regard it as essential that railways and road transport should be nationalised, and we believe that it is absolutely necesary that they should be placed under public control, and vested in the community.

Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE: I beg to move, in line 2, to leave out from the word "concern," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof the words:
proposals to embark upon a scheme of transport nationalisation, considers that the rapid development of long-distance road transport, which is vital to the commercial prosperity of the country, could not have been achieved under any system of State ownership, and, whilst anxious to promote the efficiency of our transport system, declines to anticipate the Report of the Royal Commission.
I think the House will join with me in offering hearty congratulations to the hon. Member who has just made such an excellent speech, and I am sure that we shall be glad to hear him again on a subject to which he has evidently given a great deal of attention. I thank the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Broad) for having moved a resolution which deals with a subject of great interest at the present time. The one point I am sorry about is that if the hon. Member wants to repeat the famous journey in the well known rhyme about John Gilpin, he will not do so under private enterprise, but on a nationalised omnibus which he hopes to introduce at a later time.
If this resolution is carried into effect, it will lead presently to the paralysing of industry, to the lowering of the social conditions of the workers, and eventually to an intense misery for the widows and children of the working classes. While we admit that this process will be slow, we regard it as being; as inevitable as the malignancy of cancer. The first criticism we have to. make of the Motion is its vagueness. What is the meaning of long-distance transport and what is the exact definition of competition? I understand that hon. Gentlemen opposite do not believe in competition, but they do believe in a monopoly as long as it is a State monopoly. Take the question of nationalisation. Are you going to eliminate competition by nationalisation? Suppose that the State owned the railways. Suppose that you were to have nationalisation of the Dutch railways, would that eliminate competition if it led to the nationalisation of all the railways on the Continent? There would still be the intense competition of the Hook of Holland route with the Boulogne route. Would that lead to the nationalisation eventually of all the Continental railways? It is perhaps an easier matter in this country if it is desired to eliminate competition and return to the: primitive conditions when trade was in its infancy, but I am sure it would be a fundamental mistake. Take what. John Stuart Mill said:
Competition in fact has only become in any considerable degree the governing principle of contracts at a comparatively modern period. The further we look back into history, the more we see all transactions and engagements under the influence of fixed customs.
Then take another economist who lived in pre-transport times, namely, Adam; Smith. He said:
The quantity of grocery goods for example which can be sold in a particular town, is limited by the demand of that town" and its neighbourhood. The capital, therefore, which can be employed in the grocery trade cannot exceed what is sufficient to purchase that quantity. If this capital is divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend to make both of them sell cheaper than if it were in the hands of one only; and if it were divided among 20, their competition would be just so much greater and the chance of their joining together in order to raise prices just so much less. Their competition might perhaps ruin some of themselves but to take care of this is the business of the
parties concerned, and it may safely be trusted to their discretion.
Hon. Members wish to eliminate competition by co-operation and co-operative societies, but I am bound to say that presently they will find private enterprise entering into competition with the co-operative society. The whole argument of hon. Members opposite is directed to this question of cooperation. Let us take Karl Marx. He says:
Competition does show on the other hand the following things:

(1) The average profits independent of the organic composition of capital in the different spheres of production, and therefore also independent of the mass of living labour appropriated by any given capital in any particular sphere of exploitation.
(2) A rise and fall of prices of production as a result of changes in the level of wages, a phenomenon which flatly contradicts at first sight the law of value of commodities.
(3) The fluctuations of market prices, which reduce the average market price of commodities in a given period of time, not to the market value, but to a market price of production differing considerably from this market value. All these phenomena seem to contradict the determination of value by labour time as much as the fact that surplus value consists of unpaid surplus labour."
All this is delightfully clear matter, for Socialist Members, and I am not in the least surprised that the intelligentsia on the other side regard it as perfectly clear thinking and suitable for them. On this question of competition there is no person so desirous of eliminating competition as the man who is courting his future wife. There is strong competition among hon. Members opposite, that is between the trade unionists and the intelligentsia, and it is very interesting to find that the intelligentsia have a large proportion of representation in the Government. Every Socialist Member is undergoing competition from somebody in his constituency who expects to take his place from him. Do hon. Members wish, for instance, to take away the competition of ladies vying with each other in the set of their hats? Is this question of doing away with competition humanly possible? We on these benches say that it is not, and that it is not desirable, because it is a human instinct, and that you are trying to do away with something which it is humanly impossible to do
away with, and to set up something which is based on a foundation of insecure props, and a thing which we believe will eventually lead to disaster in the future.
I would ask hon. Members opposite whether a good many revolutions have not been due first of all to absence of competition. When you consider the question of nationalisation and private enterprise you have to remember that there are in this country over 50,000,000 of people employed, compared with 1,000,000 unemployed. Nationalisation has not been tried out so successfully that you are justified in introducing it. Are you not rather like a doctor who has not one patient, but 50,000,000 patients, and who says that he has an elixir of life and is going to inoculate not one patient, but 50,000,000 patients although he has never tried it out?
I will give an example of nationalisation. This House of Commons was built under a system of nationalisation. It was in a very bad state a hundred years ago, and it was not until it was burnt down that anyone set to work to put it right. Now it is one of the worst ventilated and stuffiest of Houses of Parliament that there is; that is the effect of nationalisation stopping all progress. In my constituency, as in many others, there are several railways whose junctions with the amalgamated railways cause a good deal of dissension. There are also many complaints made by the railwaymen about matters which hon. Members opposite understand better than I do, but one of the complaints that they make is that since the amalgamation the whole system of railways has become too big, and that they do not get a fair deal from those above them. Supposing, they say, that they wished to suggest anything to improve the system, no attention would be paid to it now. In the old days such matters were put before the Board of Directors, but now it would probably go to someone 300 or 400 miles away, who would simply treat it as waste paper. We believe that the abolition of competition is not only against human nature but against human interests. Healthy competition keeps people up to date and keeps undertakings up to date. Competition helps to bring keen young men to the front. Nothing is so depressing as to see men merely working for their pensions, with no responsibility and no intention of incurring it. Competition is
vital to the living conditions of the working classes of this country. It is essential to commercial prosperity, and only under competitive conditions can progress and the social uplift of this country be maintained.

Lord BALNIEL: I beg to second the Amendment.
The Motion which we are debating this evening has a particular interest owing to the fact that it deals with one of the many specific pledges given by hon. Members opposite at the election. A specific pledge was made to nationalise the railway system. Hon. Members opposite have discovered an easy way of shelving some of the more thorny questions which arise, and of postponing the evil day when possibly they may be called upon to fulfil some, at any rate, of the many pledges they have given. They have adopted the method of appointing a Royal Commission to inquire into the matter. Unfortunately, in this case they were debarred from doing that by the fact that the Royal Commission had already been appointed. The Royal Commission has issued two Reports, and its final Report is still awaited. A few weeks ago I should have thought that the one final and complete answer to the Motion before the House would have been, "Surely it is quite ludicrous for hon. Members to anticipate the findings of the Report of a Royal Commission"; but, unfortunately, it seems to be becoming the habit of hon. Gentlemen opposite to do that, and therefore I should feel a little chary about listening to an argument which a few weeks ago would no doubt have seemed quite suitable.
The terms of the Motion before the House are singular and interesting. It declares that hon. Members opposite view with concern the lack of adequate co-ordination in the transport services of Great Britain. That seems to me to be curious, coming from hon. Members who only a few months ago rejected a Bill for the co-ordination of the traffic of London. The whole Motion is couched in the vague phraseology for which the party opposite are gradually becoming famous. I should have thought, for instance, that we should have been given a definition of some of these terms—of nationalisation, for instance. It is very difficult to say what
nationalisation means. I know of no adequate definition of it; I know of no method by which nationalisation can come about. I should have thought that on a Motion advocating nationalisation hon. Members opposite would have told us how they proposed to bring it into effect. The railways, as we know, are owned by an enormous number of people; they are more widely owned, perhaps, than any other form of property in the country. The hon. Gentleman opposite shakes his head. Perhaps I exaggerate, but everyone will agree that they are extremely widely owned. How is this very widely owned property to come into the possession and control of the State?
It has been said, and I naturally believe it, that there is now no longer any possibility of the old threat of confiscation. The only alternative is purchase at a fair and legitimate price. In moving this Motion, has the hon. Gentleman made any estimate of that price? Does he know what would be the cost to the country of what he is suggesting? Perhaps either he or the Minister of Transport will give some answer to that question. If an answer cannot be given, surely a more frivolous Motion can rarely have been brought before the House. Has the Chancellor of the Exchequer been consulted? Has he been asked what the cost would be, and how he proposes to raise money from the taxpayers in order to buy out the existing owners of the railways? Has he been consulted? I do not believe for one moment that he has, and I believe that, if he were consulted, he would say, in his pungent Parliamentary phrase, that the whole question was grotesque and ridiculous.
I think we are liable to forget that this Motion cannot stand by itself. You cannot nationalise railways without nationalising a great many other subsidiary things as well. The railways are also landowners, hotel keepers, engineers; they are owners of, and they work in close connection with, great docks and harbours, with ferries, steamships and so on. If you nationalise the railways, you will have to nationalise those other things as well. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Hon. Gentlemen opposite agree with me. But the moment you have nationalised those other things you get a very difficult position. You get a State-subsidised, State-organised enterprise in competition with private enterprise.

Mr. BROAD: That would be rather bad for the cow.

Lord BALNIEL: I do not know what the hon. Member means by the cow, but I for see that it will be very bad indeed for all those employed in these private enterprises, for their trade and their commerce, and for the revenue of the Exchequer. I foresee, also, that it will be very bad for the things which the hon. Gentleman so elegantly called the cow and which, I imagine, is the shareholder under private enterprise. It will be extremely bad for the taxpayer. It is obviously undesirable and unfair that a State-subsidised enterprise should be in direct competition, on exactly the same terms and lines, with a private enterprise. With the endless resources of the State behind it to back it is quite obvious that all private concerns would go to the board. Is that at last a contribution which we have from the Labour party towards the solution of unemployment? Another thing with regard to competition. The hon. Gentleman, in his very able maiden speech, referred to municipal undertakings. I believe that this Motion has been drawn specifically to avoid any competition with municipal undertakings; that is probably the intention. Does it for one moment avoid competition? You cannot draw a line. If you nationalise systems of transport all over the country, you will be coming into direct competition with the great municipal organisations.

Mr. ARNOTT: Some of our municipalities are working in co-ordination with the railways now.

Lord BALNIEL: Yes, but I really do not see that that is relevant.

Mr. ARNOTT: Obviously, they will do the same when they are nationalised.

Lord BALNIEL: I believe that it is possible to-day, on public, municipal omnibuses and tramcars, and so on to go, with one small break, from Liverpool to Hull, under different services, municipalities and local authorities. A nationalised service will follow exactly the same lines, and that, in similar degree, will happen all over the country. Long-distance transport is merely an extension of short-distance transport. It covers the same ground, but more ground. You will find that municipal transport
will probably suffer very severely by the competition. I advise hon. Gentlemen who think that they are safeguarding their municipalities by this Motion to be very cautious. By this sort of thing they are going to enter into direct competition, not only with private enterprise, but with the enterprise of municipalities, which is the last thing that they desire to do.
I want to turn from that to find out a little more about what is claimed for this nationalisation. We have been told very little as to what hon. Gentlemen opposite expect to result from nationalisation. Are railway freights going to be reduced? The hon. Member who moved the Motion said, "Yes." There is only one way in which they can be reduced, and that is by granting to the nationalised railway system a subsidy. I do not think that that would be consistent with the logic of hon. Gentlemen opposite. They would sacrifice the industries which we are safeguarding to a purely economic theory to satisfy the economic prudery of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If they do that, how can they, in logic, grant an immense subsidy to reduce railway freights? There is no other way to reduce them, and if they do not do so what on earth good are they going to do to commerce, trade and employment by nationalisation? Other hon. Gentlemen have referred to improvements of the service and have shown that there is little likelihood of our finding that under greater coordination we shall get better services. It is in the common knowledge of all Members of the House, it is in the knowledge of every porter on every railway station in the country, that the service of the railways was incomparably better before the measure of nationalisation or co-ordinisation or anything else—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] It is idle to deny that employés of railways will be in no way better off than they are to-day. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Then we may take it that the employés of the railways are to benefit in no way by nationalisation. I am sorry to hear it; I had hoped that under nationalisation they were going to be better off. I will say that in one way, at any rate, they will be infinitely worse off. Hon. Gentlemen opposite talk very freely of the desirability of the right to strike. Is it
going to make it easier for railwaymen to strike if the railways are nationalised?

Mr. JAMES WILSON: It may not be necessary.

Lord BALNIEL: It may not. The whole thing, the whole trouble about nationalisation, is "may," "possible," "theory"; not a single "fact." It may not be necessary, but what if it is necessary?

Mr. WILSON: They will strike, then.

Lord BALNIEL: Hon. Members must allow me a little latitude. If it be necessary for railwaymen to strike, do they think that they will get a fairer deal from the State than from the existing railway companies?

Mr. WILSON: Yes.

Lord BALNIEL: Do they think that when they are striking against the State it will be easier for them to stand out than when they are striking against the body of directors and shareholders of a railway company? Of course, hon. Gentlemen, whatever they say, know perfectly well that it will be far, far harder for them in every way. [An HON. MEMBER: "There will be no need for it."] At any rate, we have got now, in the admission of the hon. Gentleman opposite, one step further from possibility towards certainty. I fail to see what is to be got out of nationalisation. It seems to me that hon. Gentlemen opposite wish to risk the whole existing transport system of our country for a theory. That is, to say the least of it, a somewhat reckless thing to do.
This House is being asked to agree to a Motion which is reckless, and I very much hope that the House will not agree to it. Hon. Gentlemen forget that the losses under a national industry would fall not only on the industry but also on the taxpayer. They forget that we are already suffering under a burden of taxation greater than that of any other country in the world. I believe that the time has come when that burden is about as big as can be borne. The limit has been reached of another burden—the burden of the State. We complain in Parliament that we have more work than we can see to efficiently—to municipalities and local authorities the burden is excessive—and I believe that to add to that
burden the enormous and crushing burden of running the whole transport system of the country would reduce the whole theory of government to an absurdity.
I hope that the House will not commit itself without due consideration to what I believe to be an extremely ill-thought-out, extremely reckless, and extremely frivolous Motion, but that the Minister of Transport who, I believe, is a moderate and a sensible man, and who will, no doubt, answer and treat hon. Members perhaps with more courtesy than his predecessors on the last two nights from that Bench, will think fit to suggest to his followers that they should put commonsense before a threadbare, outworn, and in many cases discarded experiment, and that they should support the Amendment which I now second.

Mr. HERBERT MORRISON: We have had to-night a very interesting Debate on a matter of very important and increasingly urgent public policy. One or two references have been made to certain problems which affect the Metropolis and the surrounding area, but the Government do not regard this Motion as being related to the local traffic conditions which exist in the various great centres of the country. Therefore, as in our judgment the Motion deals essentially with the national aspects of transport policy, rather than the local aspects of transport policy, I propose to say nothing in this connection with regard to difficulties which may exist of a local character in London, Manchester, Glasgow or great provincial centres. The Motion which is before the House refers to the difficulties which have arisen as a result of the existence in these times of free competition, or at any rate, a great measure of free competition, in the transport industry. I am bound to say that I was a little surprised that the Mover of the Amendment should in the year 1929 stand up in his place as an advocate of free competition in transport.
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I had hoped that we were all Socialists to the extent, at any rate, of being convinced that free competition in transport has proved to be injurious, and that coordination in some way was the urgent necessity of the modern situation. Just as the hon. Member who moved the Amendment represented the extreme right
wing of his party on these matters, so I am afraid the hon. Member for North-East Bethnal Green (Major Nathan) represents the extreme right wing of the Liberal party on the issue of public ownership and of public responsibility. We have had an interesting Debate representing all points of view. In my view, there can be no question that the building up of a transport system on the basis of free competition has been injurious to the efficiency of the public service of that industry. The railway companies to-day, the nation to day, the travelling public and probably the workmen employed by the transport undertakings, are suffering from the needless costs involved in transport consequent upon the high capital charges, and to some extent the high maintenance and running charges which are involved in the industry having to carry burdens which it would not have to carry if we had deliberately built up a transport system as a national coordinated concern, instead of gradually developing in a hotch-potch way without any coherent plan or any systematic policy.
At numerous points in the railway system and at numerous points in the road transport system there are misfits, bad junctions, duplicated routes, and numerous other problems which will be put right only by (further substantial capital expenditure involving additional burdens upon the industry. The capital costs of the industry are undoubtedly being increased by the competitive stages through which the industry went and through which the industry is going to some extent at the present time. Nobody can read of the prices paid for land by railway companies in their early days without feeling some indignation against a Parliament which allowed the railway companies to be bled to the extent that they were, and against a competition which largely placed the railway companies in the hands of the landlords, because more than one railway concern was seeking the advantage of running over given tracts of land. Nobody can read the early history of the railways and of the competition one with the other, without realising that the capital cost of construction of British railways was very much higher than it ought to have been. The fact is that there were these competitive efforts, that
railway companies even in their process of coming to this House for permission to run the railways were squeezed and almost, if one may use the word, blackmailed right and left by this interest and that interest in order that this concession and that concession should be given. Nobody who reads the history of British railways impartially can come to any other conclusion than that free competition, on the basis of everybody being out for themselves, has been injurious to railway companies and injurious to the nation itself.
Road transport has come, and nobody ignores the fact that road transport has come to stay. That is an additional competitive factor. Road transport is competing with railways; and do not let it be ignored that the railways are competing with road transport. I get many recitals of the troubles of the railway companies in relation to road transport; but one of the things which has interested me is that in some districts I am beginning to get complaints from road transport interests of excessive competition from) the Railway companies. Then there is the canal system, which, instead of having been fitted into the whole national system of transport where it was an economic proposition suitable for the transport of given goods, has been regarded as a separate competitive system; with the result that railways, road transport, and canals, and to some extent coastwise shipping, are competing with each other, and conflicting with each other, and the total cost of transport is correspondingly increased.
I thought, until I heard the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Lindsey (Lieut.-Colonel Heneage), who moved the Amendment, that everybody was agreed as to these evils, and that everybody recognised that competition was played out, and that the Socialistic gospel of co-operation and co-ordination in itself, if we do not press it to the point of public ownership, was a doctrine which was accepted in these times by all political parties in this House. I still believe that with the exception of a small minority of hon. Members of this House that is the case; and we, on these benches, are very glad that our propaganda and our education have been so enormously successful that most of the great and enlightened
capitalists of the country are among the keenest opponents of competition under modern conditions.
The case for co-ordination is a very strong one. I do not want to repeat what I said in a debate in this House on another matter, but we must face the fact that the whole theory that competition gives us the cheapest and most efficient service is wrong. If competition duplicates the capital costs of erecting plants and setting up systems, if it involves things being done twice or three times or four times over, if it involves the brains and the energies of the leaders of industry being devoted to the process of cutting each other's throats rather than getting on with their work; then, in the end, that sort of business must increase the cost of running the various industries of the country; and nowhere has it been proved more conclusively than in the transport industry. If there are needless capital and maintenance costs in the organisation of any industry, they must be met either by the owners of the capital in the industry or by the users of the commodities or the service of the industry, or they must be met, as they are unfortunately often met, by driving down the wages of the workpeople who are engaged in the industry. The sooner we face that fact, and shape national policy accordingly, the better it will be. Coordination is in the air. With the exception of the hon. and gallant Member for Lindsey, who moved the Amendment, everybody recognises that this can be done and it ought to be done.

Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE: I hope the hon. Gentleman will not misinterpret me. I am whole-heartedly in favour of coordination as well as of competition.

Mr. MORRISON: I was about to say that if the hon. and gallant Member remains in this House for another 10 or 20 years we shall hope to convert him yet. Already he has reached the stage of progress that he has a foot in each camp, and all we have to do now is to pull the remaining foot over. The Royal Commission on Transport has just issued and presented to His Majesty a very important Report on licensing, and it is a document which is well worth the attention of every hon. Member of this House. Whether we agree with the document or whether we disagree with it, we must admit that it is a very
valuable document, ably compiled in speedy time, and I think Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the speed and ability with which they have compiled it. They propose that in the future it shall be competent for the licensing authority of the various road transport undertakings to take all these factors into account in coming to decisions upon the licensing of vehicles. The Report of the Royal Commission says:
In coming to a decision upon any application, the Commissioners shall act judicially, and shall have regard to the following considerations:

(1) The traffic needs of the whole area.
(2) The provision of adequate and efficient services throughout the area.
(3) The elimination of unnecessary services.
(4) The provision where possible of services on routes which in themselves are unremunerative.
(5) The co-ordination of all forms of passenger transport in the area, for example the provision of motor omnibus services to extend and feed tramways and trackless trolley systems rather than to compete with them, and the co-ordination of road and rail services."
In some way, by public ownership or not by public ownership, that aim of the Royal Commission must be achieved, if we are to get the best out of the road and rail transport systems of the country; and the policy of the Government is to promote and to encourage the co-ordination of transport undertakings, always provided that that co-ordination is in the public interest, and is not going to place the community at the mercy of a private monopoly set up by Statute or authorised by Statute.
Having agreed, therefore, that the principle of co-ordination is a sound principle, let us examine whether in the end, not as a matter of immediate policy but as a matter of ultimate policy, it is better to have these industries under public ownership or private ownership. It is of course possible—it has been done in the case of the railways under the Railways Act, 1921—to supervise privately owned monopolies; but what you have to recognise is that the process of State interference and State control of privately owned industries does often tend to give us the worst rather than the best of both
worlds. It means that the private undertakers themselves are not free to do what they like with their own business; that the State is controlling them at settled points, and that they are accountable to the State. There is a good example in the case of the railway companies: they are now obliged to submit the whole of their finances, their proposals, and their position to the Railway Rates Tribunal. The Tribunal is bound and obliged, so far as it can, to fix rates and charges in order to give the railway companies the standard revenue and a reasonable return upon capital. The opponents of the railway companies are free to go there.
I was myself one of the amateur counsel for about three years in the proceedings before the Railway Rates Tribunal; and I got myself involved in a bigger job than I knew when I started. But almost anybody can go; they can speak and can cross-examine, and the procedure is very much like that of a Court of Law. I am bound to say that the members of the Railway Rates Tribunal have done their work very ably, in very difficult conditions, and I think they have been very fair to all parties concerned in the whole of the business. But what does it mean? It means that the technical officers and the managers of the railway companies had to spend months and months, and even years, devoting a whole host of their energies to the purpose of fighting for their interests against the traders, the London County Council, and people like myself who were fighting for the interests of the workmen before the Tribunal. If private concerns have any advantage at all, it is the advantage of initiative and of freedom to go on day by day and not to be interfered with; and it is a matter for consideration whether you increase the benefit of private industry and advantage the community itself if you try, in the first place to insist that the industry shall be privately owned and that it shall be a private monopoly, and secondly, as you are bound to do, insist that the owners of that private monopoly shall be meticulously accountable to the community for what they do.
Speaking as a Socialist, I say that you are in danger under a, private monopoly, publicly controlled, of fettering the spirit of private enterprise, without giving a
sufficient advantage to the community, and the community itself is in this difficulty that as it does not carry the financial responsibility for the undertaking which it is controlling, there is a limit to what it can do. It cannot force things down to the point that the undertaking is ruined. Therefore, the community is trying to control something for which it is not responsible and, in the end, the owners and managers of the undertaking are in the best position before the tribunals that are set up, because they are really the only people who know all about the matter, however much the other people may try to find out. Therefore, competition is bad and co-ordination is good, but co-ordination means that private monopoly, if it is privately owned, must be publicly supervised, and you are in danger in those circumstances of getting the worst of both worlds and not, as the hon. and gallant Member for North-East Bethnal Green said, the best of both worlds.
Let us not be too hard upon the railway officials and the railway companies. [Laughter.] Yes, I mean that. Anybody who has read their history and knows the way that they were held up by landlords, sometimes by Parliament, and the interests that blocked their Bills and squeezed things out of them—sometimes we did it—must sympathise with the railway companies. Let us not underestimate the difficulties that they have had to go through. It is not necessarily the railway companies that are conscious sinners, it is the system upon which they have been built that is bad. Let us not denounce the railway officials. My impression is that the men who are running the railways are not the least among the best quality of industrialists. They are a pretty good body of men. Their technical officers, the general managers, are men of considerable ability. [An HON. MEMBER: "So are the drivers."] Certainly the drivers. If they did not drive so well, some of us would not be here to-day. The railway companies have had very great difficulties to face.
Is the Conservative party, is the Liberal party bound to say that in no circumstances will they ever consider the nationalisation of a single industry? It is the word we sometimes boggle at, and not the thing. What was the attitude
of the hon. and gallant Member for North-East Bethnal Green? He made a very Whiggish speech of the Victorian period. I am disappointed in him, because I had read that he was the leader of Radicalism in the East End of London, and I expected that he would come into the twentieth century and not remain in the nineteenth century. But even the hon. and gallant Member visualised some form of public ownership, provided the politicians were not dominating the concern all the time. That is a legitimate and perfectly fair point to raise. Is it for the Conservative party which nationalised the telephones to oppose nationalisation? They may be sorry that they did it, but they did it. Surely they will admit that the telephones have been better managed since they were nationalised? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Then I can only assume that they never tried to get a call under the old conditions. However, let that be as it may.
Take the Post Office as an example of public ownership. No one would seriously try to hand the Post Office over to a company, to be run for profit. It was the Conservative party which nationalised the Broadcasting Corporation, and the Conservative party will certainly resist handing over the Army, Navy and the police to contract. The Conservative party in many towns and cities has favoured the municipalisation of a whole series of services. Birmingham is a model of municipalisation which we gladly follow. It was the last Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer who, in 1918, said that we ought to nationalise the railways, and the Coalition Government, under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), apparently authorised him to say it. You are all involved in that proposal of 1918 to nationalise the railways. Have we come to such a point of political doctrinaire intolerance that both political parties are prepared to say that in no circumstances will they face the public ownership of any industry at all? I do not believe it. You have done so much in the way of converting private ownership into public ownership that I cannot believe that that is the position. In 1908 a Motion was brought before the House of Commons by a Liberal Member in favour of the public ownership of the
railways; at any rate, it went a long way towards it. He moved:
In view of the widespread complaints on the part of traders, agriculturists and the general public, with regard to the railway charges and facilities, and particularly with regard to the preferential treatment of foreign goods, the time has come to consider how far this evil can be remedied by State purchase of the railways as foreshadowed by the Railway Regulations Act of 1844.
Evidently, as far back as 1844, in the days of Mr. Gladstone, nationalisation was contemplated. On the 11th February, 1908, a Liberal Member moved a Motion which favoured nationalisation. Let me now read a statement by the present Leader of the Liberal party. I admit that his speech was able and that it is a little difficult to find out on which side he really was, but he was not intolerant of nationalisation. I commend it to the hon. Member for North-East Bethnal Green as an example of the progressive spirit which he might adopt. The right hon. Gentleman said:
He did not agree with his hon. Friend who spoke last that that was only part of the Socialistic programme of nationalising everything. His hon. Friend knew that this was one of the very few countries in the world in which railways were not nationalised. Who were the men who had nationalised railways? The man who nationalised the railways in Germany hated and fought Socialism. Prince Bismarck was not a member of the Labour party.
The Liberal Yellow Book actually indicated that it was prepared to consider on their merits proposals for public ownership. What is the difference between the Liberal view and the full-blooded Socialists, with whom I am proud to be associated. My friends believe in Socialism, as I do, as a general doctrine. I believe it would advantage the human race; but I must justify every piece of public ownership I want upon economic facts and the business merits of the proposal; every step must be justified as I go and I must prove that every industry I want to nationalise would be a business proposition in the interests of the nation. If I cannot show it is a business proposition then I have no right to ask for it to be done and Parliament has no right to do it. The Liberal party and I am not sure that I could not say the Conservative party also—I almost think I could say the former Secretary of State for the Dominions—declare: "We reject your general Socialist doctrine, we do
not believe in your ultimate objective and your theory of life, but come to us with specific cases of industries which you think would be better under public ownership and we will consider them on their merits." We are in so much agreement that we could nearly nationalise half a dozen things straight away.
Let us not he dogmatic as to what nationalisation means. The old idea, shared by many hon. Members opposite, was that nationalisation meant setting up an elaborate new State Department with miles of red tape, every official in the Department having gold braid on his shoulders and that the Department should be run in the same way as the ordinary Civil Service and the ordinary Department of State. I never accepted censures and condemnation of the Civil Service, and I particularly resent sneers at the Civil Service by men who have been in Governments and who have been indebted to the Civil Service for seeing them through their jobs. But what I have described is not essential to the idea of nationalisation. I believe that more and more we have to follow the model, especially if we are going to nationalise a series of industries, of Parliament deciding that a certain undertaking is to be taken over by the public and made accountable to the nation, but that the day-to-day management of that undertaking is not to be in the hands of Ministers of State, of politicians, or of public persons accustomed to the procedure of this House or of municipalities—because we sometimes talk more than we ought to do—but that it is to be in the hands of a limited number of first-class business men employed by the community and encouraged to run that concern with all the vigour of commercial and business enterprise. Nor must they be afraid to dismiss people who are not fit for their jobs. No publicly-owned business should be in the position that nobody can be got rid of, if they are not fit for the work on which they are engaged. That is a plan of public ownership combined with business enterprise which should not be resented by hon. Members opposite, certainly not by hon. Members opposite below the Gangway. Therefore let us realise that public ownership can be administered in various different ways, and I
think the form of nationalisation which has been opposed by many hon. Members to-night is the form under which they imagine that everything would be under a glorious State Department with Ministers dictating to the poor general manager, workmen interviewing Members of Parliament to get increased wages, with all kinds of meticulous intervention and nobody able to spend a penny without Treasury sanction. That is not my plan of running a publicly-owned undertaking.
The Government support the principle of this Motion. We shall vote for it and we hope the House will adopt it, because it is in accordance with the general policy of the Labour party and, according to their public documents, it is in accordance with the general policy of the Liberal party. Therefore it ought to be carried. But the Motion is a declaration of opinion, and it would be improper on my part if I led the House to believe that it wall be followed immediately by a Bill for the nationalisation of the railways. We have our legislative programme, and we have to consider it according to the needs of the Parliamentary Session and the time. The Government cannot be committed to introducing such a Measure one way or the other. One thing I am quite clear about myself, and it is that, if we ever nationalise the railways, I personally do not want to take them unless I take long distance road transport with them. I have already got enough things that do not pay, including two canals in Scotland. The only reason that I have got them is that nobody else wanted them. I find that hon. Members opposite firmly believe in Socialism when there is money to be lost and strongly oppose it when there is money to be made.
We oppose the Amendment because it is contrary to the principles for which the Labour party stands, but the vote of the House will be a free vote. This is a Private Member's Motion, and Government Whips will not be put on. I am expressing the individual opinions of myself and my colleagues, but this is not a Government Division, if a Division takes place. I can only say, in conclusion, that I thank the House for listening to me so patiently. It has been a very interesting Debate and one of the best tempered Debates we have had, at any rate this week, and I hope it will
set the standard of conduct for such Debates to come. At any rate, transport coordination, transport economy, is very important and very near to my heart. I want to see the nation's transport, whoever runs it, run as a sound business thing, economically and efficiently. Transport is vital to the nation, and the House of Commons does well to-night to consider the important problems which it raises at the present time.

Major GLYN: I am sure the whole House will have listened with intense interest to the very excellent speech of the Minister of Transport, which was particularly interesting to some of us on this side, because it differed so largely from the definitions of nationalisation which we heard during the course of the General Election. It is always interesting to realise that all of us have got to he educated further and further on the lines of the Front Bench policy of the Labour party, and I feel that this Debate has been extraordinarily interesting if for no other reason than that it has brought into the limelight the fact that no nationalisaion of one form of transport is possible without taking into account the road services and possibly the coastwise services, and if you do that, I imagine the air services also. If you start doing it with one of those sections and not the others, you are having a lopsided arrangement, which I am sure the present most efficient Minister of Transport would never tolerate for a moment. Consequently, I think that although in the counse of time we may see a Bill introduced by the Government to nationalise, in the new order of nationalisation, all forms of transport, yet I want to say one word of more immediate moment.
The managers of the British railways are not here to speak for themselves, and I am sure the Mover of the Motion will forgive my drawing attention to what he said, when he stated that the managers paid more attention to running the railways for the profit of the shareholders than for the comfort and convenience of the public. That is not true. I am quite sure that all hon. Members opposite who have worked on our railways and have had personal knowledge of the managers and officers of the great British railway companies will at any rate recognise this, that I know no single officer or manager who puts the convenience of the public
and the trade of the country second to anything else. Another thing I think we have to realise is this, that were it not for the co-operation that we had with many hon. Members whom I see sitting opposite now when we tried to get, and succeeded in getting, the co-ordination of road services, we should never have got that Bill through. By their assistance to us in getting those road powers for the railways, we have carried out one of the very things which is asked for in the Motion, namely, greater co-ordination between those two forms of traffic. What surely we want to do, all of us, is to improve still further this system of public utility organisation such as the British railways are on truly British lines, which I do not think can be called nationalisation even of the new type, because it is peculiarly British. Every hon. Member knows that any scheme which a railway company desires to bring in has to be brought to this House, and by the rules of Order, if it he a question of making a railway in Nottinghamshire, for instance, it does not prevent any Members asking why there are not water bottles and third-class sleepers on the west coast route.
Any question of railway interest can be brought up but if you had any form of nationalisation which took away the initiative, which I believe that private enterprise still has, the railway representatives of trade unions, both in this House and outside, would not have anything like the same position that they have to-day. I like to think that the railway industry has succeeded by experience in showing an example to all other industries of what can be done by representatives of the men and of the management and the owners of the company working together. We had our differences, but we now have the machinery, thanks to the 1921 Act which works exceedingly well, and I do not believe that a single hon. Gentleman opposite will dispute the fact that there is no other industry in this country so highly organised from the point of view of the workers and the management as the railway industry. If there be any others, I should like to hear which they are. We all believe that the trade and industrial success in this country depends upon bringing modern methods to bear on all our industries, and, speaking from this side of
the House, I admit at once that private enterprise is very much on its trial. I recognise that, and I believe also that in some cases industries are suffering because pre-War minds are trying to deal with post-War problems.
An hon. Gentleman opposite quoted a speech which the Leader of the Opposition made in Glasgow, and which I think everyone on this side believes was perfectly right. We on these benches do not stand for inefficiency of management or of anything else. Not a single Member on this side, as far as I know, defends parasitic directors who are not worth their salt or their salaries, and we do not want to see the old system continued. We are trying to break that down, and are succeeding in breaking it down. May I utter a word of warning If the railway industry is working well with the workers—[An HON. MEMBER: "It is not!"]. If it is not, I am sorry, for I know no industry in this country where the machinery is more efficient and enables complaints and difficulties to be more quickly solved. It is only right to say that the Lord Privy Seal and others—whom I will not mention by name, but we all know them—have shown an example how to get terms for their men while recognising the difficulties of the industry at the particular time. This has produced a feeling of confidence which will take a great deal to break down. If that confidence exists in an industry between the management and the representatives of the workers, I am convinced that it is an efficiently managed industry.

Mr. HAYCOCK: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell me of one major improvement except third-class sleepers, in the last 25 years?

Major GLYN: I was discussing the relationship between the management and the representatives of the men, and an hon. Member asks me about third-class sleepers. That just illustrates what I said before, that any question of railways which may be discussed is always interrupted by same question to do with railways which is not under discussion at the moment. In answer to the hon. Member opposite, I may say third-class sleepers have been introduced, and I hope they will be extended. I feel they have satisfied a public need, and I do not
think we need stand in a white sheet to say we are sorry for having introduced them. To return to my subject, I feel that we have great flexibility under the present system, whereby we have the railways nominally under private enterprise, but really controlled as a public utility company, controlled by the public with various tribunals. There is a sort of buffer. All the men working on the railways are employed by an organisation which is not the State, and it seems to me there must be a right of appeal given to every worker, be he railwayman or otherwise, to some authority beyond his immediate employer. Therefore, we must always maintain the State in the third position, because that will ensure greater confidence and is a better system for those who employ and those who are employed.
The Minister of Transport just now paid a very proper eulogy to the work of the Transport Commission under Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, and it seems to me rather extraordinary that he is not willing to go into the Lobby with those who support this Amendment, because what the Amendment says is that whilst we are anxious to improve the efficiency of our transport system we decline to anticipate the report of the Royal Commission. I gather from the Minister of Transport that he thinks it is one of the best Commissions ever set up, and I agree with him, and surely it would be very foolish for those holding that view to pass a Resolution which, although it cannot easily be put into force, will none the less commit them to something which may not be in the Report of the Royal Commission. I am sure hon. Members opposite would not like to go against the Report of the Commission which their own Minister of Transport says is so extremely good.
In these days of big amalgamations and an increasing size of undertakings, the two problems of industry are management and magnitude. In this House in 1922 I sat through the proceedings of the railway committee upstairs. The great problem that confronted us was what was the economic limit in size for an industrial unit to be efficiently and properly managed. I believe that the limit of size is what is within the capacity of a human brain. I think one man cannot manage a vast concern if he cannot pay sufficient
attention to the details of the business. In the 1921 Act 35 companies were grouped into four, and I submit that since that grouping economies have been effected. But I am conscious of one thing, that we must not allow stagnation in the ranks of railway officers, who feel that there is no chance of promotion to positions that would have been open to them had there been more companies in existence. The one thing that matters is to keep the human touch between the management and the workers. The one thing we are trying to beat in these modern days is the huge, cruel concern which grinds down people without thought for their individual characters. We on our side are trying to build up something which is human, and for which the Leader of the Opposition has spoken time and time again. You will never get good management and consideration for the worker and consideration of the worker for the employer unless you have an organisation which enables that human touch to be established.
Magnitude and monopoly are all right as far as they go, but they perish if they have not a spirit of human kindness in them. It is quite hard enough to manage these huge undertakings under present circumstances, but how is it possible to maintain in them human touch and sympathy. You must encourage your good men to grow up and be keen about their work. How can you do that if you have an enormous thing which crushes out all possibility of human initiative. However you may define nationalisation there is a very great danger of having a great top heavy thing, a sort of juggernaut which rides roughly over the aspirations of the best workers. We must leave room for every good man to get to the top. I do not think that wages will come down again. On the other hand I think we shall always have the support of those who represent labour to help us to give rewards to the men who deserve them, and not pay rewards to the men who do not deserve them.

Mr. CHARLETON: I think the organised workers will read the reports of this Debate to-morrow with interest. I am sure they will be very surprised to read the Amendment which has been moved which seems to me to postulate that all is well with transport, and that
no one has any complaints to make about it. One has only to remember that every time a railway Bill is introduced all kinds of complaints are raised, and I suggest that the hon. Member for Louth (Lieut.-Colonel Heneage) could not go down to his constituents and convince them that they are adequately served with railways in that part of the country. Hon. Members opposite are very concerned about the parlous condition of industry and its future, and what they are anxious about is the bringing down of costs. The Resolution we are discussing aims at that. There is springing up in this country a very great virile road transport, but the people who carry merchandise by road will not take anything you offer as the railways have to do. Those who are at present concerned with road transport will only take the goods which are remunerative, and they are taking the best of the traffic. Even when they get to the towns near the base of operations they go round to find goods to bring back again at prices which are almost unremunerative.
On the other hand, the railway rates and fares are governed by the Railway Rates Tribunal. At the present time we burn coal in London and the heavy freightage has to be borne by the railways. Unless the nation takes cognisance of this opposition on the roads industry will have to bear a still heavier burden because the best paid freightages are taken by road and only heavy goods are left for the railways. Consequently the cost of working the railways will go up, and our capacity to compete with the foreigner will become more and more difficult. What we ask is that as sensible people we should get together and look at the matter. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Abingdon (Major Glyn) that the modern manager is doing his best, but he has a ghastly heritage to get over. I am the grandson of a railwayman, my father was a railwayman, and I have spent most of my time on the railway. I hope what I am saying will not affect my promotion, but I do say that everything the old directors could do wrongly they did wrongly. They made every possible mistake, and in the early days when they were offered certain freights to carry one director even said: "Why, you will be asking us to carry coal soon." We know now that coal is a very remunerative freight. The locomo-
tive engineers have been up to now the most conservative lot in the country and have made all the mistakes possible. The evil is that these mistakes have got to be paid for, and they will be paid for to the end of time as long as the railway companies are owned by private individuals. Dividends have to be earned and the companies have to pay for all these mistakes and that makes the difficulties of the railways in competing with this new form of transport all the greater.
What we ask in this Motion is that we should go into the whole affair and remove this foolish and needless competition. The Minister of Transport put exactly the view we hold about the ownership of the railways—not that which is pictured in the minds of hon. Members opposite and which does not bear much relation to the truth. We railwaymen have been trying to think things out. The hon. Member who seconded the Amendment asked whether the railwaymen thought that nationalisation would affect wages. We do not, and we have made that perfectly plain at all times. It may be news to hon. Members that the workmen have very little control over their wages. The National Wages Board which settles hours and wages is dominated by four railway users with an independent chairman, so we are in their hands. The hon. Member also spoke about strikes. The railways have been in operation about 100 years and there have only been three national strikes during that period. So why he should talk about strikes passes my comprehension. I know he is very young and may not know very much about the history of railways. We are a most peaceable lot, and what we want to do it to get the nation to leave laisser faire behind, to approach the question from a central point of view, to look at the difficulties and to direct the evolution of transport which is now taking place.

Mr. SCOTT: In the few remaining moments I should like to say a word as a Liberal in regard to this Motion, seeing that the Minister devoted a considerable part of his speech to the Liberal party and asked us to say whether we contended that there was no institution which should be nationalised. We do
not regard nationalisation as a political principle. We think it is entirely a question of expediency. We think that, in examining a proposal for the nationalisation of any industry or concern, the whole of the facts should be put on the table and examined. The Minister of Transport has paid the Liberal party a great compliment, because he envisaged a public concern, which is precisely what is to be found in the printed policy of the Liberal party. I would, however, venture to point out a very grave fallacy in the reasoning of the hon. Gentleman. He evidently has in view a board of experts, as he called them, but he has not faced up to the main question which is raised in this Motion, namely, that of the ownership of the concern which these experts are to manage. How is it possible to have a concern like the railways financed, as the Motion means, by a public fund, while the management of that fund is in the hands of a public body of experts? I say with great earnestness that the two things are quite incompatible.
That leads me to give what I consider to be, in a single word, the remaining argument against this Motion, and I would put, to any of my hon. Friends on the opposite side who are prepared to vote for the Motion, a very pertinent question. If they were proposing, as a matter of personal concern to them, to buy a business of any kind which was offered to them, would they at once say, "Yes, we will buy," or would they not in the first instance ask to see a balance sheet of the business? They would, of course, ask, "Does the business pay now?" The railways, as my hon. Friends know, are at present, and have been for a number of years, paying their dividends out of reserves and not out of profits at all, and yet this Motion asks the House to favour the purchase by the State of this concern which is not proving, in all cases at any rate, to be a profit-making concern. [Interruption.] The fact is that the dividends' have been paid out of reserves and not out of profits in a number of instances. With regard to the Motion that is before the House, the position that I and, as I understand, my colleagues are taking up is this: We do not favour nationalisation as a general principle, but we are prepared to examine any particular case
that is put before us. We believe, with regard to the railways, that the economic facts to which the hon. Gentleman has referred have not been proved in favour of nationalisation. But equally we do not accept the implications in the Amendment which has been moved by the hon. and gallant Member for Louth (Lieut.-Colonel Heneage), and which we think is a non possumus Amendment.

Mr. MILLS: rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Mr. SPEAKER: I think the House is prepared to come to a decision.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 227; Noes, 139.

Division No. 9.]
AYES.
[11.0 p.m.


Adamson, Rt. Hon. W. (Fife, West)
Grundy, Thomas W.
Messer, Fred


Adamson, W. M. (Staff., Cannock)
Hall, F. (York, W. R., Normanton)
Middleton, G.


Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher
Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Montague, Frederick


Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (Hillsbro')
Hall, Capt. W. P. (Portsmouth, C.)
Morgan, Dr. H. B.


Alpass, J. H.
Hardie, George D.
Morley, Ralph


Ammon, Charles George
Hartshorn, Rt. Hon. Vernon
Morrison, Herbert (Hackney, South)


Arnott, John
Hastings, Dr. Somerville
Mort, D. L.


Ayles, Walter
Haycock, A. W.
Moses, J. J. H.


Baker, John (Wolverhampton, Bilston)
Hayday, Arthur
Mosley, Lady C. (Stoke-on-Trent)


Baldwin, Oliver (Dudley)
Hayes, John Henry
Mosley, Sir Oswald (Smethwick)


Barnes, Alfred John
Henderson, Thomas (Glasgow)
Muff, G.


Barr, James
Henderson, W. W. (Middx., Enfield)
Muggeridge, H. T.


Batey, Joseph
Herriotts, J.
Murnin, Hugh


Beckett, John (Camberwell, Peckham)
Hirst, G. H. (York W. R. Wentworth)
Naylor, T. E.


Bellamy, Albert
Hoffman, P. C.
Noel Baker, P. J.


Bennett, William (Battersea, South)
Hollins, A.
Oliver, George Harold (Ilkeston)


Benson, G.
Hopkin, Daniel
Palln, John Henry


Bentham, Dr. Ethel
Horrabin, J. F.
Paling, Wilfrid


Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)
Hudson, James H. (Huddersfield)
Palmer, E. T.


Bowen, J. W.
Isaacs, George
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)


Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charles W.
Jenkins, W. (Glamorgan, Neath)
Perry, S. F.


Brockway, A. Fenner
John, William (Rhondda, West)
Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.


Bromfield, William
Johnston, Thomas
Phillips, Dr. Marion


Bromley, J.
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Picton-Tubervill, Edith


Brooke, W.
Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd)
Pole, Major D. G.


Brothers, M.
Jowett, Rt. Hon. F. W.
Potts, John S.


Brown, C. W. E. (Notts. Mansfield)
Kelly, W. T.
Quibell, D. J. K.


Brown, James (Ayr and Bute)
Kennedy, Thomas
Raynes, W. R.


Brown, W. J. (Wolverhampton, West)
Kenwortny, Lt.-Com. Hon. Joseph M.
Richards, R.


Buchanan, G.
Kinley, J.
Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)


Burgess, F. G.
Kirkwood, D.
Riley, Ben (Dewsbury)


Buxton, C. R. (Yorks. W. R. Elland)
Lang, Gordon
Riley, F. F. (Stockton-on-Tees)


Caine, Derwent Hall
Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George
Ritson, J.


Cameron, A. G.
Lathan, G.
Romeril, H. G.


Cape, Thomas
Law, Albert (Bolton)
Rosbotham, D. S. T.


Carter, W. (St. Pancras, S. W.)
Law, A. (Rosendale)
Rowson, Guy


Charleton, H. C.
Lawrence, Susan
Salter, Dr. Alfred


Chater, Daniel
Lawrie, Hugh Hartley (Stalybridge)
Sanders, W. S.


Church, Major A. G.
Lawson, John James
Sandham, E.


Clarke, J. S.
Lawther, W. (Barnard Castle)
Scrymgeour, E.


Cluse, W. S.
Leach, W.
Scurr, John


Cocks, Frederick Seymour
Lee, Frank (Derby, N. E.)
Sexton, James


Compton, Joseph
Lee, Jennie (Lanark, Northern)
Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston)


Daggar, George
Lees, J.
Shepherd, Arthur Lewis


Dallas, George
Lewis, T. (Southampton)
Sherwood, G. H.


Day, Harry
Lindley, Fred W.
Shield, George William


Denman, Hon. R. D.
Lloyd, C. Ellis
Shillaker, J. F


Dickson, T.
Longbottom, A. W.
Shinwell, E.


Duncan, Charles
Longden, F.
Short, Alfred (Wednesbury)


Ede, James Chuter
Lunn, William
Simmons, C. J.


Edmunds, J. E.
Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
Sinkinson, George


Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)
McElwee, A.
Sitch, Charles H.


Edwards, E. (Morpeth)
McEntee, V. L.
Smith, Alfred (Sunderland)


Egan, W. H.
Mackinder, W.
Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe)


Freeman, Peter
Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)
Smith, Frank (Nuneaton)


Gibbins, Joseph
McShane, John James
Smith, Rennie (Penistone)


Gibson, H. M. (Lanes. Mossley)
Mansfield, W.
Smith, Tom (Pontefract)


Gill, T. H.
March, S.
Smith, W. R. (Norwich)


Gossling, A. G.
Marcus, M.
Snowden, Thomas (Accrington)


Gould, F.
Markham, S. F.
Sorensen, R.


Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)
Marley, J.
Spero, Dr. G. E.


Graham, Rt. Hon. Wm. (Edin., Cent.)
Mathers, George
Stamford, Thomas W.


Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A. (Colne)
Matters, L. W.
Stephen, Campbell


Griffiths, T. (Monmouth, Pontypool)
Maxton, James
Strachey, E. J. St. Loe


Groves, Thomas E.
Melville, J. B.
Strauss, G. R.


Sullivan, J.
Watkins, F. C.
Williams, T. (York, Don Valley)


Sutton, J. E.
Watson, W. M. (Dunfermline)
Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)


Taylor, W. B. (Norfolk, S. W.)
Wellock, Wilfred
Wilson, J. (Oldham)


Thurtle, Ernest
Welsh, James (Paisley)
Wilson R. J. (Jarrow)


Tillett, Ben
Welsh, James C. (Coatbridge)
Winterton, G. E. (Leicester, Loughb'gh)


Tinker, John Joseph
West, F. R.
Wise, E. F.


Toole, Joseph
Westwood, Joseph
Wright, W. (Rutherglen)


Tout, W. J.
Whiteley, Wilfrid (Birm., Ladywood)
Young, R. S. (Islington, North)


Turner, B.
Whiteley, William (Blaydon)



Viant, S. P.
Wilkinson, Ellen C.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Walker, J.
Williams, David (Swansea, East)
Mr. Mills and Mr. Broad.


Wallace, H. w.
Williams, Dr. J. H. (Llanelly)



NOES.


Ainsworth, Lieut.-Col. Charles
Glyn, Major R. G. C.
Morrison-Bell, Sir Arthur Clive


Albery, Irving James
Gower, Sir Robert
Muirhead, A. J.


Allen, W. E. D. (Belfast, W.)
Grace, John
Nathan, Major H. L.


Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S.
Granville, E.
Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)


Aske, Sir Robert
Gray, Milner
Nicholson, O. (Westminster)


Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley (Bewdley)
Greene, W. P. Crawford
Oliver, P. M. (Man., Blackley)


Balfour, George (Hampstead)
Gretton, Colonel Rt. Hon. John
Oman, Sir Charles William C.


Balfour, Captain H. H. (I. of Thanet)
Griffith, F. Kingsley (Middlesbro' W.)
Owen. H. F. (Hereford)


Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.
Gritten, W. G. Howard
Peake, Capt. Osbert


Beaumont, M. W.
Gunston, Captain D. W.
Penny, Sir George


Bevan, S. J. (Holborn)
Hacking, Rt. Hon. Douglas H.
Peters. Dr. Sidney John


Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman
Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir F. (Dulwich)
Peto, Sir Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)


Blindell, James
Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)
Ramsay, T. B. Wilson


Bourne, Captain Robert Croft
Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Zetland)
Ramsbotham, H.


Bowater, Col. Sir T. Vansittart
Harvey, Major S. E. (Devon, Totnes)
Remer, John R.


Bracken, B.
Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley)
Reynolds, Col. Sir James


Braithwaite, Major A. N.
Hennessy, Major Sir G. R. J.
Rodd, Rt. Hon. Sir James Rennell


Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)
Herbert, S. (York, N. R., Scar. & Wh'by)
Ross, Major Ronald D.


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Berks, Newb'y)
Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller
Rothschild, J. de


Burgin, Dr. E. L.
Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.)
Salmon, Major I.


Cadogan, Major Hon. Edward
Hunter, Dr. Joseph
Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)


Castlestewart, Earl of
Hunter Weston, Lt.-Gen. Sir Aylmer
Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)


Cayzer, Maj. Sir Herbt. R. (Prtsmth, S.)
Hutchison, Maj.-Gen. Sir R.
Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)


Christie, J. A.
Jones, F. Llewellyn- (Flint)
Sandeman, Sir N. Stewart


Colville, Major D. J.
Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)
Savery, S. S.


Conway, Sir W. Martin
Jones, Rt. Hon. Leif (Camborne)
Scott, James


Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H.
Kedward, R. M. (Kent, Ashford)
Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.


Crookshank, Cpt. H. (Lindsey, Gainsbro)
Kindersley, Major G. M.
Sinclair, Sir A. (Caithness)


Culverwell, C. T. (Bristol, West)
King, Commodore Rt. Hon. Henry D.
Skelton, A. N.


Davidson, Rt. Hon. J. (Hertford)
Lamb, Sir J. Q.
Smith, Louis W. (Sheffield, Hallam)


Davies, Dr. Vernon
Lambert, Rt. Hon. George (S. Molton)
Smith, R. W. (Aberd'n & Kinc'dine, C.)


Davies, E. C. (Montgomery)
Law, Sir Alfred (Derby, High Peak)
Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)


Duckworth, G. A. V.
Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Somerville, D. G. (Willesden, East)


Dugdale, Capt. T. L.
Little, Dr. E. Graham
Southby, Commander A. R. J.


Elliot, Major Walter E.
Llewellin, Major J. J.
Stuart, J. C. (Moray and Nairn)


Eimley, Viscount
Lymington, Viscount
Thomson, Sir F.


Erskine, Lord (Somerset, Weston-8. M.)
Mac Robert, Alexander M.
Train, J.


Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univer.)
Makins, Brigadier-General E.
Vaughan-Morgan, Sir Kenyon


Ferguson, Sir John
Margesson, Captain H. D.
Wallace, Capt. D. E. (Hornsey)


Fison, F. G. Clavering
Marjorl banks, E. C.
Ward, Lt.-Col. A. L. (Kingston-on-Hull)


Foot, Isaac
Millar, J. D.
Warrender, Sir Victor


Ford, Sir P. J.
Mitchell-Thomson, Rt. Hon. Sir W.
Wells, Sydney R.


Forestier-Walker, Sir L.
Monsell, Eyres, Com. Rt. Hon. Sir B.
White, H. G.


Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E.
Moore, Lieut.-Colonel T. C. R. (Ayr)
Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George


Gault, Lieut.-Col. Andrew Hamilton
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)
Womersley, W. J.


George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)
Morrison, Hugh (Wilts, Salisbury)



Glassey, A. E.
Morrison, W. S. (Glos., Cirencester)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES—




Colonel Heneage and Lord Balniel.

Main Question again proposed.

It being after Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER proceeded to interrupt the business.

Mr. BROAD: rose in his place, and claimed to move "That the Question be now put," but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS: rose—

The Debate stood adjourned.

FISHING INDUSTRY (COMMITTEE).

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Kennedy.]

Mr. WOMERSLEY: There is a matter to which I wish to call the attention of the House It is the question of the Fishery Inquiry Committee as set up by the Government. The Labour party, in the manifesto which they issued at the time of the General Election, promised a full and complete inquiry into the
fishing industry, and in accordance with that promise they have set up a Committee of Inquiry. It is about the composition of that Committee that I ask permission to lay a few facts before that House. There are three kinds of Committee which the Government could have selected. They might have selected a Committee of Members of this House; but I am glad to know that they have not done so. They might have selected a Committee of people of experience in the industry; but I am sorry to say that they have not taken that course. They might have brought into being an impartial Committee of people neither connected with the industry nor connected with politics at all, to inquire into this very important industry; but they have chosen a far different course, and it is of that that I have to complain. This is a vast industry, the sixth largest industry of the country, about which there has been no real inquiry for many years, but about which those who are interested in the industry have called upon successive Governments time and time again to institute a thorough inquiry; but this present Government thinks so little about that great industry that they have relegated this inquiry to a sub-committee of a committee. I ask hon. Members just to consider the position. How can you expect the people who are interested in this industry to have any real faith in the composition of this Committee and in the way in which it is going to do its work? I have not the time to read the protests which I have received from all over the country, but I will read a typical one. The protests are coming not from political organisations but from people who are really interested in the fishing industry. Here is a letter which I have received from the Devon and Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee:
It is felt that if the Government really intended the Commission to hold a useful inquiry into what is a matter of prime national importance it would surely have appointed upon it some members with actual experience of the difficulties and conditions which are peculiar to the industry. It was confidently expected that the constitution of any such Commission would certainly include some representatives of the sea fisheries' committees of the country, who are, at any rate, in close and constant contact with the various problems presented.
What do we find as regards the personnel of the Committee, which is really
a Sub-Committee of the Committee of Civil Research? We find that there is a Member of Parliament upon the Committee. I have no complaint against the hon. Member for Clay Cross (Mr. Duncan). I believe he will do his duty as a member of the Committee, but I submit that it is not a right thing to appoint one member of one party in this House on a Committee such as this and not appoint representatives of other parties. I prefer to have no Members of Parliament on the Committee, so that it should be entirely free from the influence of politics as far as this House is concerned. I also find that Captain Basil Hall is a member of the Committee. Captain Hall was the Socialist candidate for Lowestoft at the last Election. I read some of this gentleman's speeches, and I say, as a man who does claim, and rightly so, to know something about this industry, that Captain Hall knows nothing whatever about it. There is also a former Socialist Member of this House upon the Committee—Mr. Robert Murray. Mr. Murray may be a very excellent gentleman, and he may do good work on the Committee, but to have three members on the Committee who are directly identified with one political party is, to my mind, entirely wrong, and not in the interests either of the Government or of the industry, in which I and many other hon. Members are so keenly interested.
I want to give the Minister a reasonable time in which to reply, and therefore I will not press the matter any further except to say that in July last I put a question to his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries as to whether he would consult the British Trawlers' Federation, the Federation of Wholesale Fish Merchants, the Fisheries Organisation Society—a society that can speak on behalf of the insured fishermen, the type of men who really requires something in the way of Government help at the present moment—and also other organisations connected with the fisheries. I wanted consultations to take place with the organisations that represent the men, and those who are responsible for the carrying on of the industry so far as owning the vessels are concerned. I wanted it to be a fair committee. The right hon. Gentleman replied "Yes." I saw him afterwards,
and he said, "Are you satisfied with my reply?" I said, "I certainly am, and if you do consult these organisations before you set up the committee, I do not think you will go far wrong, and you will satisfy those people in the industry who are so anxious that this inquiry should take place, and that it should be a fair, impartial inquiry and one that will be helpful, not only to this great industry, but to the nation as a whole." My right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture (Dr. Addison) is to reply. I am glad that I can address him as my right hon. Friend. He is a Lincolnshire man and knows something about the fishing industry. I am glad that he is to be chairman of the Committee. I hope he will be able to give reasons why in setting up the Committee, instead of going along the excellent lines set up by the Minister of Agriculture in July, they have appointed what I consider is a thoroughly unsatisfactory Committee.

Mr. ARTHUR MICHAEL SAMUEL: I want to enter a protest before the Parliamentary Secretary replies. There is nobody on this Committee who represents the shell-fishing industry. The Department of Overseas Trade is trying to find openings for fresh trade, and here we have a great opportunity for the development of the shell fishing, and especially oysters in this country. No attempt has been made to revive and restock the oyster fisheries, about which I have had some discussion with the Minister of Agriculture. In my young days there was a big oyster-fishing industry in and around Norfolk, and I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to see that someone is put on this Committee to explore the possibility of reviving this oyster fishery with a view to keeping money in the country which is now going out of it.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE (Dr. Addison): I am indebted to the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. A. M. Samuel) for his interjection. There can be no better justification for the position which the Government are taking up on this matter, as I will explain later. The hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley) has entirely misapprehended the character of this Committee. It has not
been appointed under a Department, but under the Cabinet, and it follows exactly the type of inquiry which has been set up in regard to the great industries of steel, iron and cotton. It is a Committee which is responsible to the Cabinet as a whole instead of to a Department, but that is a distinction which the hon. Member has not seen. It is a more authoritative kind of Committee, and not a less authoritative Committee.
His next contention is that the Committee is not constituted on the basis of a representation of interests. The Committees which are inquiring into the steel and iron and cotton industries were deliberately not constituted on the basis of representing interests. I could not have a better illustration of the wisdom of the course of the Government than the interjection of the hon. Member for Farnham, not a better illustration as to the position in which we should find ourselves if we had followed the hon. Member's prescription in constituting this Committee. We deliberately abstained from making it a Committee representing the various interests concerned. If we had done so we should have had members for the three associations mentioned by the hon. Member for Grimsby and a representative of the oyster fisheries. I have here a list of the representative organisations associated with the industry—25 in number—and if we had departed from the principle of not constituting the Committee on the basis of representation there is not a single one which it would have been fair to exclude, and you would have had a Committee entirely unwieldy and not the type of body to examine evidence and report impartially. It would have been biased, unconsciously. We abstained deliberately from constituting the Committee on those lines, because it would have been an entirely unworkable body.

Mr. WOMERSLEY: Did you consult them?

Dr. ADDISON: I have no knowledge of the statement to which the hon. Member refers, but I know that we consulted quite a number of important persons, and the advice given to me, without exception, when we were considering the constitution of the Committee was: "Deliver us from a Committee which is made up of representatives of different interests. That was the unanimous
view given to me by people who know the business. I am certain that our decision was entirely wise. Let me come to the hon. Member's criticism of the personnel. In the case of Captain Basil Hall, late of the Royal Navy, we were looking for someone who is familiar with the problems of the inshore fishermen in our small ports around our coasts. For 20 years Captain Basil Hall, a distinguished officer of the Navy, has been the inspector of the lifeboats around our shores. Here therefore you have a man who knows every small port throughout the land and who is able to advise us on their peculiar and special difficulties. He is a good choice. He is the type of man we were looking for because he knows our little ports as well as any man we could possibly find. The next one is Mr. Holland Martin, who is Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company and we selected him because the Fishmongers' Company concerns itself with research into fisheries and takes an active interest in promoting the well-being of the industry. At all events nobody can dispute that he is a man of high standing in the City and will bring to the Committee the benefit of ripe experience. Then there is Sir Felix Pole, formerly general manager of the Great Western Railway Company, who can advise us on the transport question. We have also Mr. Robert Murray, director of the Scottish Co-operative Society, because we are considering the marketing issue. Finally, there is Professor Scott, of the University of Glasgow, to bring the economist type of mind on to the Committee. We were aiming at collecting a body of men not biased in any particular direction. And let me say this to the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. A. M. Samuel) that the Government of which he was a member never did anything at all in this direction, but we have already taken steps to obtain evidence on the very point which he has just brought out.

Mr. SAMUEL: A year ago when I was Financial Secretary to the Treasury I made a speech and took some particular steps about the oyster fishery with the Ministry. The right hon. Gentleman is wrong. He is under a complete misapprehension. A year ago I started it.

Dr. ADDISON: I am not saying what the hon. Member said but what he did. The Government of which he was a mem-
ber failed to take this initial step to obtain authoritative guidance on how we could help this industry, and before we had been in office four months we set up this Committee. Our proposal is to take evidence from every one of the bodies mentioned by the hon. Member for Grimsby. We know very well the enormous importance of that port and I can assure him that we shall spare no pains to be advised as well as possible by every responsible body representing all sections of the industry. Already this week we have had a special journey down to Yarmouth for a special report on the interests represented in the herring industry, and already steps are being taken to do useful work. We shall go round our shores and not spare either time or trouble to get the best evidence we can. That evidence will be considered by a body of capable people, and they will present to us, I hope, useful and valuable recommendations. It will be a much better type of committee, more serviceable and workable, than if we set up a great body of people representing vast numbers of industries.

Mr. DUNCAN MILLAR: Those of us who are interested in this question have failed to obtain any satisfaction from the speech which the right hon. Gentleman has made, and we shall take an opportunity of raising the matter on another occasion. Can he give us an assurance that it is intended to proceed immediately with the great problem of work which is immediately called for in connection with the fishing industry, and not to await the deliberations or the Report of this Committee, particularly in relation to the urgent requirements of the Scottish fishermen?

Dr. ADDISON: So far as work is concerned, nothing will be delayed by this Committee. We have already started five separate harbour improvements, and sanctioned a great dock at Grimsby. They are already in operation, and several other harbour improvement schemes are already being gone into and some have already been done. I can assure the hon. Member that the Secretary of State for Scotland is collecting information as to what, is required in Scotland.

It being half-past Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.